Yous guys wanna talk about second person plurals in here?

[silverlifter]

From what I hear in Texas:

= 3 is “y’all”

> 3 calls for “all y’all”

Possessive is y’all’s

My big linguistic discovery here is the use of “whenever” in place of “when” in almost every instance, that’s new to me. I think it’s more recent since my Dad was born in Texas but never used it.

What do all y’all think?

I'm good with the first part, but the "whenever" substitution seems a real strain on meaning.

I'll pose a question here since, as I said before clarity of language are important to me, and I have a tendency to thing abstractly. Recognising that language and the meaning of a given word are often misused and, may from misuse, lose their meaning, could it be that 'whenever' originally meant a time more distant, more abstract, or more unlikely than what 'when' meant?

According to my copy of the OED, "when ever" (initially two words) comes into first recorded use in 1380. The meaning is as we use it today, but the editors add that it also had an additional layer of meaning of "time weakened or lost." I don't know what that means, and the sample sentence is by Wycliffe in Middle English, so....I don't really understand it.

Interesting question, though.

That rather poetic turn, "time weakened or lost", means (paraphrasing) at that point in time when $condition is/is not fulfilled, ie., is detatched from a specific time. OED likens it to a phrase with a preposition and a gerund, eg., "on seeing..., or in saying..." So, whenever the dog barks, the guests will have arrived.