Plural of You
The Plural of You
Quick, what is the plural of you? Answer: you. The English language does not have a formal plural of the second person, unlike most other languages, which distinguish between the singular and plural form of you. Examples include tu and vosotros or ustedes in Spanish, tu and vous in French, du and ihr in German, and so on. Of course, many other languages, such as Spanish, also still have formal and informal forms of pronouns, which English seems to have dropped long ago. Anybody remember thee, thou, and ye? In Old English thou was supposed to be the singular of you long ago, while you was the plural. Ye was used as either the singular or plural you at different times in history. Somewhere along the way, they fell out of favor and out of usage for unknown reasons. If you were to say thou nowadays, though, no doubt people would look at you funny, as if wondering what century you came from.
But the presently accepted English second person pronoun, you, makes no distinction between number, which can lead to confusion about who or how many are being addressed. Because of this, or in spite of it, English speakers have come up with their own solutions outside of the rigid rules of formal English grammar. Any and every English teacher will instruct you that the plural of you is you but in common, everyday speech, more often than not, a colloquialism or slang is used to refer to more than one listener addressed in the second person.
The most prevalent, both from mass media and popular culture, especially in the US, is you guys. Despite the fact that guys is masculine, the informal plural you guys is nearly always used by both males and females to refer to more than one in groups composed of both all males, all females, and of mixed gender. Very seldom do speakers alter it to you girls or you gals when referring to a group comprised of only females and, if the group is mixed, they are always referred to as you guys. You’d think the feminists would be in a tizzy over this, but I guess they have better things to do, like support abortion.
Other informal or local uses of the second person plural vary by location. Youse can be heard in places like New York but is also very common in Ireland and Scotland—except in Dublin where they say it as yiz or ye, which can also be heard as a plural of you in other places. In Pittsburgh you can hear yinz. Yas or yuz, as an informal contraction of you guys, can be heard in some places where you guys is used. There is even the redundant youse guys. In parts of the South, Appalachia, and southern Pennsylvania you might hear you’uns, you’ins, you’ens, or you’nz, depending on the spelling. In Britain, they have the option of saying you lot.
Quick, what is the plural of you? Answer: you. The English language does not have a formal plural of the second person, unlike most other languages, which distinguish between the singular and plural form of you. Examples include tu and vosotros or ustedes in Spanish, tu and vous in French, du and ihr in German, and so on. Of course, many other languages, such as Spanish, also still have formal and informal forms of pronouns, which English seems to have dropped long ago. Anybody remember thee, thou, and ye? In Old English thou was supposed to be the singular of you long ago, while you was the plural. Ye was used as either the singular or plural you at different times in history. Somewhere along the way, they fell out of favor and out of usage for unknown reasons. If you were to say thou nowadays, though, no doubt people would look at you funny, as if wondering what century you came from.
But the presently accepted English second person pronoun, you, makes no distinction between number, which can lead to confusion about who or how many are being addressed. Because of this, or in spite of it, English speakers have come up with their own solutions outside of the rigid rules of formal English grammar. Any and every English teacher will instruct you that the plural of you is you but in common, everyday speech, more often than not, a colloquialism or slang is used to refer to more than one listener addressed in the second person.
The most prevalent, both from mass media and popular culture, especially in the US, is you guys. Despite the fact that guys is masculine, the informal plural you guys is nearly always used by both males and females to refer to more than one in groups composed of both all males, all females, and of mixed gender. Very seldom do speakers alter it to you girls or you gals when referring to a group comprised of only females and, if the group is mixed, they are always referred to as you guys. You’d think the feminists would be in a tizzy over this, but I guess they have better things to do, like support abortion.
Other informal or local uses of the second person plural vary by location. Youse can be heard in places like New York but is also very common in Ireland and Scotland—except in Dublin where they say it as yiz or ye, which can also be heard as a plural of you in other places. In Pittsburgh you can hear yinz. Yas or yuz, as an informal contraction of you guys, can be heard in some places where you guys is used. There is even the redundant youse guys. In parts of the South, Appalachia, and southern Pennsylvania you might hear you’uns, you’ins, you’ens, or you’nz, depending on the spelling. In Britain, they have the option of saying you lot.
The second most well-known and used informal plural of you is known and recognized wherever English is spoken as referring to more than one second person, but is commonly used only in the US South and Southwest, and among African-Americans no matter where they live. It is, of course, ya’ll or y’all. Some people spell it the first way, as a contraction of ya all, but it makes more sense to me to put the apostrophe after the y, since everyone knows the word is really a contraction of you all. Why Americans in the Northeast began to use you guys and those in the South began to use you all and then shortened it to y’all is a mystery to me.
But in my opinion, y’all makes much more sense. First of all it is gender neutral, which ought to please the feminists. Second, the addition of the word all to you makes it obvious that more than one is being addressed. Third, it is only one syllable instead of two. And lastly, it just plain sounds better to me than the harsh, guttural you guys. Y’all just seems to roll off the tongue, sweet as honey, especially in a Southern accent, while you guys always makes me cringe, thinking I’m in the middle of the Bronx about to get robbed.
Of course I am biased, because I come from Texas, where just about every other word is either y’all or ain’t. Growing up with the word, I thought everybody used it. Back then, it was common even on TV, when there were still a lot of rural shows or shows set in the South or the Old West. But nowadays, with the media being controlled either from New York or LA, you have such ill-scripted or reality-baseless shows where even characters supposedly from Texas or other parts of the South actually say you guys, when anybody from Texas knows they would never say that.
In fact, I had a little bit of culture shock when I moved from Texas to South Florida. The hardest thing for me to get used to was hearing the hated you guys coming from everybody’s mouth instead of the beloved y’all. At first it was very difficult to adjust to, but over time, after hearing it so many times, I was forced to accept it in order to live in a climate where the winters are warm. Some people might be thinking, wait a second, South Florida is just about as far south as you can get in the US. But, anybody who has been to South Florida knows that half of the people there came from somewhere else and the vast majority of those came from New York or New Jersey or elsewhere in the Northeast, and unfortunately brought that horrible accent with them. So, you can be sitting in the sun on the beach beneath palm trees thinking you are in a tropical paradise, but close your eyes, and you can imagine you’re in Times Square or Central Park, based on the accents you hear. Either that, or Mexico or South America, but that is a topic for another day.
Back to y’all, not only is it shorter to say and easier on the ears, it is also much more flexible in its usage than you guys. In Texas and other parts of the South, despite the fact that y’all is plural and used to address groups of more than one, there is a subtle difference between y’all and all y’all. It would take too much space to explain the difference to someone who is not already familiar with the distinction, but, in the short version, all y’all is used to differentiate between some of y’all. And that is even in addition to the fact that in some usages, again in Texas and other parts of the south, y’all can even be used in place of you as singular. You might have to be a native speaker to understand the differences and when and how they are used, but you have none of that with you guys.
But in my opinion, y’all makes much more sense. First of all it is gender neutral, which ought to please the feminists. Second, the addition of the word all to you makes it obvious that more than one is being addressed. Third, it is only one syllable instead of two. And lastly, it just plain sounds better to me than the harsh, guttural you guys. Y’all just seems to roll off the tongue, sweet as honey, especially in a Southern accent, while you guys always makes me cringe, thinking I’m in the middle of the Bronx about to get robbed.
Of course I am biased, because I come from Texas, where just about every other word is either y’all or ain’t. Growing up with the word, I thought everybody used it. Back then, it was common even on TV, when there were still a lot of rural shows or shows set in the South or the Old West. But nowadays, with the media being controlled either from New York or LA, you have such ill-scripted or reality-baseless shows where even characters supposedly from Texas or other parts of the South actually say you guys, when anybody from Texas knows they would never say that.
In fact, I had a little bit of culture shock when I moved from Texas to South Florida. The hardest thing for me to get used to was hearing the hated you guys coming from everybody’s mouth instead of the beloved y’all. At first it was very difficult to adjust to, but over time, after hearing it so many times, I was forced to accept it in order to live in a climate where the winters are warm. Some people might be thinking, wait a second, South Florida is just about as far south as you can get in the US. But, anybody who has been to South Florida knows that half of the people there came from somewhere else and the vast majority of those came from New York or New Jersey or elsewhere in the Northeast, and unfortunately brought that horrible accent with them. So, you can be sitting in the sun on the beach beneath palm trees thinking you are in a tropical paradise, but close your eyes, and you can imagine you’re in Times Square or Central Park, based on the accents you hear. Either that, or Mexico or South America, but that is a topic for another day.
Back to y’all, not only is it shorter to say and easier on the ears, it is also much more flexible in its usage than you guys. In Texas and other parts of the South, despite the fact that y’all is plural and used to address groups of more than one, there is a subtle difference between y’all and all y’all. It would take too much space to explain the difference to someone who is not already familiar with the distinction, but, in the short version, all y’all is used to differentiate between some of y’all. And that is even in addition to the fact that in some usages, again in Texas and other parts of the south, y’all can even be used in place of you as singular. You might have to be a native speaker to understand the differences and when and how they are used, but you have none of that with you guys.
In my travels, I have found that the use of y’all is taken in different ways in different places. For example, in the rest of the US where they use the harsh you guys, if you dare to use the term y’all, the more biased and uncouth Northerners and so on, will instantly recognize you as being from the South, and more often the rural or Deep South. Many of them are so obdurate as to label you as a hick, whether you come from a ranch out in the middle of nowhere or a city in the South that has a population of several million. But at the same time they make fun of my accent, they have no idea of what I think of theirs. Even in the South, you have PhD’s, doctors, nuclear physicists, college professors, politicians, celebrities, and so on that always use y’all in their everyday speech, even if they would not write it down in anything that will be published. On the contrary, when I lived in Australia, nobody ever thought it odd, unusual, or uncivilized that I used y’all, and many people actually seemed to prefer to hear the Southern accent over that of the North that they all heard in American music, movies, and TV shows. By the way, Down Under I heard you guys, youse, and you lot, in a polyglot blending of English culture from colonization and American culture from infusion of entertainment media.
It is my contention that, since English is one of the few languages on the Earth that is not smart enough to make a distinction between the singular and plural second person, you all in the abbreviated form of y’all be recognized and accepted as the official plural form of you. It would eliminate any confusion over whether you refers to one person or to many. And there would be no more misogynist use of the term you guys, which grates so hard on the nerves and ears.
Just as ain’t is considered colloquial, uncouth, and slang, despite the fact that it is the antiquated contraction of the words am not, and should be accepted as legitimate use in the English language, y’all should be the official second person plural in English. Of course speakers from other regions and countries might prefer a different solution to English’s lack of a plural second person pronoun. I would be willing to accept youse, yuz, ye, really any of them, as long as it is not the horrible, dreaded you guys.
Jeff Vanderslice
It is my contention that, since English is one of the few languages on the Earth that is not smart enough to make a distinction between the singular and plural second person, you all in the abbreviated form of y’all be recognized and accepted as the official plural form of you. It would eliminate any confusion over whether you refers to one person or to many. And there would be no more misogynist use of the term you guys, which grates so hard on the nerves and ears.
Just as ain’t is considered colloquial, uncouth, and slang, despite the fact that it is the antiquated contraction of the words am not, and should be accepted as legitimate use in the English language, y’all should be the official second person plural in English. Of course speakers from other regions and countries might prefer a different solution to English’s lack of a plural second person pronoun. I would be willing to accept youse, yuz, ye, really any of them, as long as it is not the horrible, dreaded you guys.
Jeff Vanderslice
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