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    Default Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    It's interesting, here's what I know...

    second person plural is the same as the formal second person address in a number of languages, the ones I know of the top of my head are French (vous) and Russian (вы)

    From what I understand, the analog in English is actually you. What we lost was the informal singular, thee. So is you already plural? That would explain why we're casting about for the right word and kludging together words to communicate effectively. Some solutions others have mentioned:

    y'all, a contraction of you all, Southern US, esp TX.

    yinz, Pittsburgh. (never heard this in PA Dutch country, I grew up nearby. I can check with some friends who live there.)

    yous or youse, common in NYC/NJ and Australia.

    I find myself youseing the term all. Hello all. Sometimes you all. I did live in Texas for a while, but y'all didn't make it back to Jerz with me.

    ok, whatchoo got?

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Quote Originally Posted by manoeuver View Post
    It's interesting, here's what I know...

    second person plural is the same as the formal second person address in a number of languages, the ones I know of the top of my head are French (vous) and Russian (вы)

    From what I understand, the analog in English is actually you. What we lost was the informal singular, thee. So is you already plural? That would explain why we're casting about for the right word and kludging together words to communicate effectively. Some solutions others have mentioned:

    y'all, a contraction of you all, Southern US, esp TX.

    yinz, Pittsburgh. (never heard this in PA Dutch country, I grew up nearby. I can check with some friends who live there.)

    yous or youse, common in NYC/NJ and Australia.

    I find myself youseing the term all. Hello all. Sometimes you all. I did live in Texas for a while, but y'all didn't make it back to Jerz with me.

    ok, whatchoo got?
    I obviously must mix with the wrong people and grown-up completely ignorant of the ways of the community in which I lived because I've never heard yourself being used. Not in my childhood, school life, work, or social life in many parts of NSW, the ACT, the NT, or Qld. That said, it may be a South or Western Australian colloquiallism that im unaware of.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Te reo Māori is one of those languages with pronouns that accomodates addressing individuals, two people, or a group:

    * Tēnā koe - greeting 1 person
    * Tēnā kōrua - greeting 2 people
    * Tēnā koutou - greeting 3 or more people
    Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Quote Originally Posted by An old bloke View Post
    I obviously must mix with the wrong people and grown-up completely ignorant of the ways of the community in which I lived because I've never heard yourself being used. Not in my childhood, school life, work, or social life in many parts of NSW, the ACT, the NT, or Qld. That said, it may be a South or Western Australian colloquiallism that im unaware of.
    You are unfamiliar with Norman Gunston, then?
    Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    @manoeuver: Deb heard "yinz" when she lived in Bucks County but it didn't come from there. The people she knew who used it were from either Western Pennsylvania or Appalachia.

    I find your suggestion that it is the singular "you" that we have lost interesting, something I hadn't thought of. I'll need to think about that.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    I'd tend to say the singular was more often thou (subjective) than thee (objective), but using that rule, the subjective ye rather than you would probably be more appropriate.

    I'll add German irh, Swedish ni, Spanish ustedes (or vosotros/as for the very formal in Spain), Italian voi and there are so many more that make things easier.

    I'm an RP (BBC) English speaker, but elsewhere have regularly come across yous, you'uns, yez, and more. I dislike the 'you guys' that seems to have crept into use almost everywhere, and y'all has made it's way across the pond now as well.

    My solution is usually to use 'all of you', 'both of you', or something similar to make it unambiguous that it's a plural you.

    I feel a handwriting exercise coming on.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Quote Originally Posted by manoeuver View Post
    ...yinz, Pittsburgh. (never heard this in PA Dutch country, I grew up nearby. I can check with some friends who live there.)....
    That's my take on it, too, starting around Chambersburg and then west. I would've phonetically spelled it yoo-enz. I doubt any Pennsylvania public school teacher includes it in their curriculum.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    What I simply cannot abide is "you guys's". I've seen many an otherwise intelligent person reduced to an absolute moron by the use of that phrase.
    Sent from my constipated POS computer at work.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?


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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Quote Originally Posted by Biber View Post
    What I simply cannot abide is "you guys's". I've seen many an otherwise intelligent person reduced to an absolute moron by the use of that phrase.
    Why? It's a perfectly clear possessive.

    I teach grammar for a living, but I admit the often totally arbitrary and elitist rules of insistence on certain constructions. "Ain't," for example, is perfectly clear and precise. There is no reason not to use it except for adherence to a kind of cultural protocol that is set up to distinguish the educated from the non-educated. And even though I am an educator, the elitism and classism that education has bolstered over the modern centuries is an injustice.
    "Y'all" is also quite clear. These terms exist and persist because they work and fill a gap in the formal rules of usage.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Quote Originally Posted by TSherbs View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Biber View Post
    What I simply cannot abide is "you guys's". I've seen many an otherwise intelligent person reduced to an absolute moron by the use of that phrase.
    Why? It's a perfectly clear possessive.

    I teach grammar for a living, but I admit the often totally arbitrary and elitist rules of insistence on certain constructions. "Ain't," for example, is perfectly clear and precise. There is no reason not to use it except for adherence to a kind of cultural protocol that is set up to distinguish the educated from the non-educated. And even though I am an educator, the elitism and classism that education has bolstered over the modern centuries is an injustice.
    "Y'all" is also quite clear. These terms exist and persist because they work and fill a gap in the formal rules of usage.
    This is what I had in mind when I started this. So much of our language has been eradicated in the classroom. My own accent was deprecated in school as, I suppose, were almost all local accents. The Scottish Gaelic language is on the verge of extinction due to a misguided educational policy which has been corrected rather too late. Did the plural "you" disappear because it was adjudged not respectable at some point. Maybe that's a bit far-fetched but it's what I was thinking.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    I can relate to that. As a Westcountryman you would never be able to tell where I came from by listening to me speak. You would have thought it should be obvious, but it is not. My speech carries the tones of what you may call an unaccented pronunciation, which has its roots in received pronunciation.


    You may have also noticed my use of the term 'you' in the above, to be interpreted as both singular and plural depending on who is reading it. For example, eachan may see this as singular as I am replying to his post, and the rest of you may see it as plural and relating to the participants here as a group.


    As far as I am concerned the term 'you' is alive and strong, and as has been pointed out several times by others here, has many commonly used variants. Go the English language!

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Quote Originally Posted by silverlifter View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by An old bloke View Post
    I obviously must mix with the wrong people and grown-up completely ignorant of the ways of the community in which I lived because I've never heard yourself being used. Not in my childhood, school life, work, or social life in many parts of NSW, the ACT, the NT, or Qld. That said, it may be a South or Western Australian colloquiallism that im unaware of.
    You are unfamiliar with Norman Gunston, then?
    Norman Gunston? Now that is going back and hardly authoritative since everything he said and did was for comedic value. Using him as an example of 'Straiian' is like using 'Kingswood Country' as a true example of a typical Australian family.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Y'all ain't gettin' it, ain'tcha?




    By the way, why are posts that have nothing to do with pens seem to get more responses here?

    (And I include myself as part of those who do respond).
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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Tsherbs, said, 'There is no reason not to use it except for adherence to a kind of cultural protocol that is set up to distinguish the educated from the non-educated. And even though I am an educator, the elitism and classism that education has bolstered over the modern centuries is an injustice.'

    Yes, that is an injustice. Judging someone by how they dress, their accent, their use of colloquialisms (slang), and even their physical appearance including such things as height, weight, complexion, how one dresses, or visible disability is equally an injustice, and yet it is a reality of human nature. It is undeniable that we make judgements about people in the first five seconds after meeting them. For instance, I know a man who is a wheelchair user who, despite being independently wealthy, is too frequently assumed to be on welfare and poor.

    As someone who spent years teaching and advocating for social justice, I suggest that some minor things by which we are judged, such as language usage, are easily remedied by the individual concerned if they choose, and should not be an issue. In my thinking, what is an issue is the injustice attached to ethnicity and disability -- both of which can be impacted favourably by teachers such as yourself -- and the rest of us by how we treat those around us.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Quote Originally Posted by An old bloke View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by silverlifter View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by An old bloke View Post
    I obviously must mix with the wrong people and grown-up completely ignorant of the ways of the community in which I lived because I've never heard yourself being used. Not in my childhood, school life, work, or social life in many parts of NSW, the ACT, the NT, or Qld. That said, it may be a South or Western Australian colloquiallism that im unaware of.
    You are unfamiliar with Norman Gunston, then?
    Norman Gunston? Now that is going back and hardly authoritative since everything he said and did was for comedic value. Using him as an example of 'Straiian' is like using 'Kingswood Country' as a true example of a typical Australian family.
    Oh, you want authoritative. Let me suggest the Macquarie Dictionary. FWIW, Garry McDonald's genius was as a satirist; and his use of the vernacular was quite deliberate.
    Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    I am so far behind with a podcast called Something Rhymes with Purple, but it is a good podcast.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    In case others don't click through to the Macquarie Dictionary article, it has an interesting discussion of the origin of youse and similar terms:

    It is responding to an instinctively felt linguistic need. We used to distinguish singular from plural in our pronouns. We used to say thou for the singular and you for the plural, but thou was thought to be too intimate to be used by someone of lowly status addressing someone of higher status and in these circumstances a respectful you was used. So we distorted the grammar and arrived at a polite solution, but this was not without cost because there are situations where it is impossible, just from the words, to tell whether the you in question is one person or a group of people which is why we have created such constructions as you all or in American-speak, y'all, and you lot to give us a plural form. The Irish took the pronoun you and added -s to make a plural.
    Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Quote Originally Posted by mizgeorge View Post
    I'd tend to say the singular was more often thou (subjective) than thee (objective), but using that rule, the subjective ye rather than you would probably be more appropriate.
    I think that's right, my mistake. I was never even aware of the concept of cases until I started studying Russian at the age of 23 or 24.

    Thous and thees abound in the King James translation of the Bible. I've heard somewhere (could have been TV and thus is suspect) that the Amish community in the US still uses thou and thee "because it is how Jesus addressed his disciples."

    I (and probably others) always found thou and thee offputting and stiff. some folks would pepper their prayers in church and before meals with them in what young dumb me assumed was a put-on piety. Maybe young dumb me was right, but it was a revelation to me to learn that those are not formal words.

    Quote Originally Posted by eachan View Post
    @manoeuver: Deb heard "yinz" when she lived in Bucks County but it didn't come from there. The people she knew who used it were from either Western Pennsylvania or Appalachia.

    I find your suggestion that it is the singular "you" that we have lost interesting, something I hadn't thought of. I'll need to think about that.
    this is an interesting triangulation. I think there is a lot of fun to be had coming at the English language from our respective perspectives.

    Quote Originally Posted by FredRydr View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by manoeuver View Post
    ...yinz, Pittsburgh. (never heard this in PA Dutch country, I grew up nearby. I can check with some friends who live there.)....
    That's my take on it, too, starting around Chambersburg and then west. I would've phonetically spelled it yoo-enz. I doubt any Pennsylvania public school teacher includes it in their curriculum.
    yoo-enz and yinz are distinct, I think. not sure of the derivation of you-enz, but it isn't Pgh I should think.

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    Default Re: Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

    Quote Originally Posted by penwash View Post
    ...By the way, why are posts that have nothing to do with pens seem to get more responses here?

    (And I include myself as part of those who do respond).
    You know of any sales?

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