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Y'all is a contraction of you all.The spelling you-all in second-person plural pronoun usage was first recorded in 1824. [4] [5] The earliest two attestations with the actual spelling y'all are from 1856, [6] and in the Southern Literary Messenger (published in Richmond, Virginia) in 1858. [7]
you guys (widespread), y'all (Southern and South Midland), you'uns and yins (Western Pennsylvania), and yous or youse (New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Northeastern Pennsylvania) [2] However many differences still hold and mark boundaries between different dialect areas, as shown below.
Informal second-person plural forms (particularly in North American dialects) include you all, y'all, youse. Other variants include: yous, you/youse guys, you/youse gals, you-uns, yis, yinz. Possessives may include you(r) guys's, you(r) gals's, yous's, y'all's (or y'alls). Reflexives may be formed by adding selves after any of the possessive forms.
Inland Northern (American) English, [1] also known in American linguistics as the Inland North or Great Lakes dialect, [2] is an American English dialect spoken primarily by White Americans throughout much of the U.S. Great Lakes region.
y'all, or you all – southern United States, [7] African-American Vernacular English, the Abaco Islands, [8] St. Helena [8] and Tristan da Cunha. [8] Y'all however, is also occasionally used for the second-person singular in the North American varieties.
Yinz is the most recent derivation from the original Scots-Irish form you ones or yous ones, a form of the second-person plural that is commonly heard in parts of Ulster.In the first- and third-person, standard English speakers use distinct pronouns to denote singular and plural.
For this reason, many associate the pronoun with solemnity or formality. Many dialects have compensated for the lack of a singular/plural distinction caused by the disappearance of thou and ye through the creation of new plural pronouns or pronominals, such as yinz, yous [6] and y'all or the colloquial you guys ("you lot" in England).
Dialects can be classified at broader or narrower levels: within a broad national or regional dialect, various more localised sub-dialects can be identified, and so on. The combination of differences in pronunciation and use of local words may make some English dialects almost unintelligible to speakers from other regions without any prior ...