This Is This

I like the word “y’all”. We should use it more. Lots of other languages have a plural for “you”. Why don’t we have one for the second person?

English is a great language - no masculine and feminine nouns, fewer tenses to our verbs and literally buttloads of nouns. Including that one.

We have so many words that normally one will do where other languages have to use loads. You know what “counterclockwise” is in French? “Le sens inverse dans le sens des aiguilles d��une montre.” Sacre bleu, indeed.

In English you’re got the words “sickness”, “illness”, “ailment”, “disease” and “affliction”. In French they have one word “maladie”. They don’t have lots of descriptive words for the same thing. That’s why there are no French Eskimos.

But they have the word “vous”, which is the plural of “you”, or “y’all”.

We’ve all have had the following conversation:

Me: “You coming?”

Person: “Me?”

Me: “Yeah, but the others as well.”

Person: “You mean all of us?”

Me: “Yes, you and you and you.”

Persons: “OK then, we will.”

It’s a waste of time.

Imagine a hostage situation:

Police negotiator with megaphone: “Come out with your hands up and you will not be hurt.”

Terrorist: “OK then, here we come, but we want to make a statement to the press before we are arrested and we want to”

BANG!!!

Terrorist: “Aggghh!!!! What did you shoot me for?!?!”

Police negotiator with megaphone: “I meant that guy. Yes you. You will not be hurt. The rest of you are liable to be shot by one of our many snipers surrounding the building. Sorry for the misunderstanding.”

It’s a linguistic minefield and one which needs to be cleared. Maybe Paul McCartney could get involved. On Sergeant Pepper there’s a line that could have done with the plural: “…we’d like to take you home with us, we’d love to take you home.” That’s open to misinterpretation.

Y’all 8. Think about it.

Every four seconds someone says you when they mean y’all.

Snap.

Snap.

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