N/T-Local idioms (moved from another topic)

[BulldogTom]

17 hours ago, schirallicpa said:

(You-all:  not really southern, but occasionally talk to someone from the south.)

A "you-all" is a trailer Californians haul their stuff to Texas and Florida in.

Y'all is how you spell and say the word .....  Look at me, a Texan for less than 2 years and schoolin' y'all on y'all's grammer.

Tom
Longview, TX

Edited June 14, 2023 by jklcpa
moderator-created new topic

[Lion EA]

What's "all y'all"?

[jklcpa]

13 hours ago, BulldogTom said:

A "you-all" is a trailer Californians haul their stuff to Texas and Florida in.

Y'all is how you spell and say the word .....  Look at me, a Texan for less than 2 years and schoolin' y'all on y'all's grammer.

Tom
Longview, TX

Boy howdy, you got that right!     I hear it all the time from a TX friend.

 

[mcb39]

11 hours ago, Lion EA said:

What's "all y'all"?

That is everybody that you are speaking to.  We have lots of Texas friends.  Our favorite is  "tars" instead of tires.

[schirallicpa]

Years ago I was on the phone ordering supplies.  The lady at the other end guessed I was from South-western NYS.  I laughed.  I had not told her my address yet.  Caller ID was not popular yet.  (I'm dating myself.)  I asked how she knew - "I'd recognize that accent anywhere."  What accent!  She said she was from north-western PA.  I argued with her that I did not have an accent.  But she did sound like she was from PA!  

[Lion EA]

I'm from the Chicago area and do NOT have an accent. Those in southern IL have an accent. Those in WI, MN, and MI have accents. But not me!

[schirallicpa]

I also remember going to Dallas for work (when I did auditing in a CPA firm) and the guy at the hotel counter told us we talked just like we were from the evenin' news.

[Abby Normal]

4 hours ago, mcb39 said:

Our favorite is  "tars" instead of tires.

They say it that way in rural MD as well. And the stuff you put on roads sounds more like tire.

[Sara EA]

19 hours ago, Lion EA said:

all y'all

"All y'all is used in the Southern United States when a speaker wishes to include everyone being addressed. Y'all may refer to an indefinite set of members of a group, but all y'all definitively includes everyone in the group."  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/all_y'all

Having fairly recently moved to the South, I hear y'all all the time.  I thought it was cute until I read a linguist's take on the term and now I think it's wonderful and am trying to adopt it into my lexicon.  She explained that it's nothing more than a contraction for "you all," is gender neutral, is respectful to young and old alike, and is friendly and inclusive.  While many (including some Southerners) view the term as boorish, it sure beats the New England "youse."

A guy I know who grew up in CT and moved to WV now says "all" instead of "oil."  If you've been to Boston, you will be amazed how they have removed the "r" was every word and still manage to communicate (Pak your ca in Havad Yad).  John Kennedy took language lessons to try to enunciate the r sound, with limited success.

[Bart]

The first time I went to Chicago the clerk in the store checking me out asked if I wanted a beg for the item.  I said i just paid for it why do I have to beg for it also.  He meant did I want it in a bag.

[ILLMAS]

 

[mcb39]

In WI, you will fairly often hear "you guys" instead of y'all.

[Corduroy Frog]

Try going to a Mexican restaurant that has that green stuff and ask for "Guatemala Sauce."

Sorry folks.  This thread did intrigue me about the South in which I live, where they try to control traffic with signs  "No You-All Turns."

[mcbreck]

I find listening to a hardcore accent to be VERY enjoyable whether it's Brooklyn or Alabama. My in-laws are Southern Missouri and about half have a VERY strong southern accent and the other half have nothing. My niece just recently became a nurse practitioner and has had to start catching her language because people were shocked when she popped out a Y'All in meetings and patients were laughing at some of her southern idioms.

In St Louis the differences in slang are so pronounced within racial groups because of self imposed segregation which is just wild. You can get a white guy from South St Louis with a massive southern drawl and a black guy from North St Louis with a completely different southern drawl and they don't sound alike at all.

[Sara EA]

23 hours ago, mcb39 said:

In WI, you will fairly often hear "you guys" instead of y'all.

I have always resented that term.  Living in an all-male household, I definitely do not want to be grouped with those who eat over the sink and consider armpit noises hysterical.  I chose my pronouns long before it was the thing to do.

[mcb39]

41 minutes ago, Sara EA said:

I have always resented that term.  Living in an all-male household, I definitely do not want to be grouped with those who eat over the sink and consider armpit noises hysterical.  I chose my pronouns long before it was the thing to do.

I have also always been in an all-male household.  Grew up with 3 brothers; got married and had 2 sons.  I never paid much attention as parochial school made me pretty much a stickler for proper language.

[Catherine]

On 6/14/2023 at 8:48 PM, Sara EA said:

If you've been to Boston, you will be amazed how they have removed the "r" was every word and still manage to communicate (Pak your ca in Havad Yad).

They then take all the discarded "r's" and insert them in spurious places. "pahk ya cah on Warshington Street." 

On 6/15/2023 at 8:54 PM, Sara EA said:

In WI, you will fairly often hear "you guys" instead of y'all.

Guys has largely been re-defined as a sex-neutral term in the northeast, going back several decades. It would never occur to me that addressing a group, "hey, guys!" would be seen as any different from a southerner saying " hey, y'all pay 'tention here!"

 

I grew up just south of Boston and do not have the accent somehow. Growing up I constantly got, mostly from other kids but sometimes grown-ups, too, the query, "How come you talk funny?"
 

[Sara EA]

I lived most of my life in New England, and I still would never accept being grouped with the guys--those creatures who find bathroom humor funny and gorge themselves in pie-eating contests.  I've been a Southerner for less than four years and have taken to y'all as an inclusive, respectful, grammatically acceptable term.  I went to undergraduate school in Boston and if I wasn't careful  I could have come home with a Brooklyn accent.  Half of my dorm was from Neu Yok.