“You” is gender neutral, in its singular and plural form. “Y’all” is a useful plural form of “you” but as a New Zealand-English hybrid I do not have the accent to pull it off. If I could shift my accent further north perhaps I could get away with “thou” and “ye” for singular and plural forms, but only where they fit grammatically.
It is explicitly plural where ‘you’ is hard to pull off as plural because it leans heavily towards singular, just like ‘they’ leans heavily towards plural. At least in the US afaik the main competitor is ‘you guys’ for plural, which is one of those terms that is normally meant as gender neutral but the words clearly are not. So despite being from a place where that is the correct way to say it I’m in favor of y’all becoming the standard across the whole language, which it seems like it might be moving towards doing.
“ya’ll” is also American English’s answer to the problem of not have a plural form of “you” (see also: “you guys” or “you all” from which ya’ll is derived).
Due to English being heavily influenced by Romance languages, but not taking its grammatical structure purely from them, we really had no single-word version of “vous” (I don’t know other romance languages aside from French).
I’m a northerner and I still had to accept the unimpeachable logic that y’all is a versatile and useful word
The English language is sorely lacking gender neutral pronouns so it’s nice that one is getting added
It’s not new actually. Maybe revived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
I meant y’all
“You” is gender neutral, in its singular and plural form. “Y’all” is a useful plural form of “you” but as a New Zealand-English hybrid I do not have the accent to pull it off. If I could shift my accent further north perhaps I could get away with “thou” and “ye” for singular and plural forms, but only where they fit grammatically.
It is explicitly plural where ‘you’ is hard to pull off as plural because it leans heavily towards singular, just like ‘they’ leans heavily towards plural. At least in the US afaik the main competitor is ‘you guys’ for plural, which is one of those terms that is normally meant as gender neutral but the words clearly are not. So despite being from a place where that is the correct way to say it I’m in favor of y’all becoming the standard across the whole language, which it seems like it might be moving towards doing.
“ya’ll” is also American English’s answer to the problem of not have a plural form of “you” (see also: “you guys” or “you all” from which ya’ll is derived).
Due to English being heavily influenced by Romance languages, but not taking its grammatical structure purely from them, we really had no single-word version of “vous” (I don’t know other romance languages aside from French).
Easily America’s best contribution to civilization, after “right (turns) on red”.
And I’m glad it’s catching on instead of “you’uns”, “yuns”, or “yous”.