🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <37md2n$pij@crl2.crl.com>, Keith Woodworth <keithww@crl.com> wrote:

>My people came to Texas in the 30's, 1830's that is. Y'all is plural for
>you, in the words of my 12th grade spanish teacher, "Texans are the only
>english speaking people smart enought to come up with a plural form of 
>you."  O'k you's guys.

Actually, English used to have a perfectly good plural form of "you".
It was "you" (or "ye" in the subjective case).  The singular form was
"thou" and "thee".

Problem was, these words took on social as well as grammatical
meaning.  You were supposed to use "thee" to your peers and social
inferiors, and "ye" to your social superiors (cf. "tu" and "vous" in
French).  When social changes like the rise of the middle class came
along, everybody started wanting to be treated with "respect" and
referred to as "ye" by everybody else.  So the singular form
eventually dropped out of the language over a couple hundred years.

Also, Southerners are not the only ones to come up with an alternate
2nd-person plural.  (Why do Texans assume "y'all" is unique to them?
Maybe they only talk to other Texans.)  The plural form "youse" is
used in many Northern and Eastern cities.  However, it has not gained
the wide degree of social acceptance that "y'all" has in the South.  I
suspect this has to do with it originating from immigrants (i.e.,
non-native speakers).

(BTW, the loss of the 2nd-person subjective case form happened about
the same time as the loss of the singular form, and is simply part of
the gradual shift from inflected to positional syntax over the history
of English.)