The Word Y’All Need
I was at the Seattle Pride parade last weekend, where I saw multiple people wearing t-shirts that said “Y’all means All.” It reminded me of how my husband got me using this gender-neutral, inclusive word. This post first ran a few years ago, and it’s as relevant as ever.
Most people don’t adopt a new manner of speech in their 40’s, so when my husband recently started using the phrase “y’all” I wondered what was up. It wasn’t like his Swiss parents taught him to use this slang, and he’d grown up in Colorado, where y’all is uttered only by Texas transplants.
After hearing him say y’all for something like the tenth time in a week, I asked him why he’d suddenly adopted this word, which seemed out of place spoken by someone without a southern accent. He explained that he’d started using y’all with the college ski team that he coaches. Most of the skiers are women, and he thought it would be lame to refer to them as “you guys” — the phrase more widely used here in Colorado. “English really needs a plural you,” he says.
He has a point. All of the languages I’ve studied — German, Italian and Spanish — have a plural you, and while that extra pronoun was frustrating to me as a language student, I’ve encountered plenty of times when I’ve wished for a plural you in English that wasn’t gendered or regional.
According to Mental Floss, “y’all” is just one of eight ways to construct the plural “you” in English. Others include “you-uns,” “you guys,” “you lot,” and “yous.” None of the terms on this list roll off my tongue any easier than the others.
Most of the times when I long for a plural you, it’s because I’m greeting a group of friends. My fallbacks are usually “hey guys” or “hello everyone,” but neither feels as satisfying or apt as the Swiss German phrase, “Grüezi Mitenand!” (Hello everyone!)
Why? Mostly, I’m reluctant to adopt a dialect that doesn’t feel like mine. But I long ago decided that “howdy” was a perfectly apt greeting for a stranger encountered in the wilds of the West, so perhaps it’s time I follow Dave’s lead and take up y’all too. So what if I’ve always associated the word with rednecks and cowboys? If y’all is a redneck term, it’s a gender neutral, feminist one. Just ask Tami Taylor.