Bye-Bye, “Y’all”

[Draggingtree]

Bye-Bye, “Y’all”

AUGUST 2023 BY JACK TROTTER

A Letter From Charleston

Due in part to the recent rise in the use of the execrable pronominal “you guys,” a reaction has set in, or so it seems. 

 Those of us who object to the sheer vulgarity of “you guys” have been forced for decades to endure its cringe-inducing, ubiquitous assault on our eardrums while stifling our protests lest we come across as hopelessly pedantic or elitist. Of course, we in the South have been, for the most part, free of this semantic distress, except on those occasions when we reluctantly cross the Mason-Dixon line. Naturally, that distress is augmented by the difficulty we experience, in our journeys north or west, in finding decent sweet tea, edible biscuits, or shrimp and grits that don’t taste like fishy Cream of Wheat. However, I’m informed that all this may be changing. 

 How so? Well because the term “y’all”—infinitely preferably to “you guys” or “folks”—is now rapidly becoming the preferred second-person plural in places where, not so long ago, it was regarded as laughably countrified—in academic enclaves like Ann Arbor or in Manhattan board rooms. https://chroniclesmagazine.org/featured/bye-bye-yall/