"Y'all" is not directly tied to Texas or just southern talk. That term is used frequently in the midwest. In New Jersey, it's "youz" instead of "y'all". New York and New England may be different.
I'm not sure what they say in California.
Posted on 01/25/2005 7:28:57 AM PST by Arrowhead1952
Students get lesson in how Americans talk from 'NewsHour' ex-anchor
By Katie Humphrey
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Y'all better get ready because the Texas drawl is the future of American English -- at least according to journalist Robert MacNeil, who has spent many years studying and chronicling how Americans talk.
Maybe it's because of country music or migration from north to south, but any way you look at it, the number of people speaking with a Southern dialect -- particularly "Texan" -- is on the rise, MacNeil told about 270 area high school students who gathered at the campus of Advanced Micro Devices on Monday afternoon.
"Talking Southern may ultimately become the most normal way of talking American," he said, recalling a study from the 1990s that found that 76 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 41 percent of people older than 65 in the United States used "y'all" on a regular basis. And that was before President Bush took office.
MacNeil, former executive editor and co-anchor of "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour," used Monday's discussion as a prequel to his evening speech at the University of Texas' LBJ Library, part of KLRU's Distinguished Speaker Series.
The discussion focused on MacNeil's latest book, "Do You Speak American?" and his Public Broadcasting Service documentary of the same title, which aired on KLRU in early January. In the documentary -- MacNeil's first since retiring in 1995 -- he travels across the United States to explore the slang, dialects and quirky accents that give American English its linguistic diversity.
"Most people are really interested in language because it's something that we all own and it belongs to all of us," MacNeil said, adding that even slang-happy teenagers can find linguistics interesting if it is presented in the right way. "Only when they saw the series did they realize that it didn't have to be boring at all."
Students laughed as they watched MacNeil mimic a "Surfer Dude" accent using a 69-word sentence that included the word "like" 13 times. Then he slipped into a slow Southern drawl to share some typical Texas phrases with the students.
"Texas is known for its wonderfully colorful metaphors and expressions," he said, including sayings such as "meaner than a skillet full of rattlesnakes."
"The great skill in Texas is to not copy these expressions but to create your own," he said. "Our language is constantly changing."
But our perceptions of certain dialects are not, he said. While working on the documentary, MacNeil said he met people who faced discriminated for talking differently: an inner-city student who "talks black," an immigrant who speaks Spanglish and a New Englander who drops the r's in words.
"While we are very careful about what we say about all kinds of things, we permit ourselves a certain degree of racism when talking about language," he said.
As a result, people have learned to be bilingual in a sense, speaking a formal standard English and a more informal dialect, depending on the situation, he said.
Sarah Mendoza, a senior at Del Valle High School, said she noticed changes in her classmates' speech patterns as they asked MacNeil questions.
"People talked differently here than when they are at home or with their friends," she said. "Some of them stuttered or tried to use a bigger vocabulary."
One student's use of the word "proliferation" did indeed draw gasps from his peers.
That is still the most common pronunciation - "MAN chack" or "MAN shack".
This will come as news to Californians.
But surely you must admit, using "y'all" makes perfect sense, since it fills a gap in the English language (pluralizing "you".) Smoother than the Yankee "You guys".
Good, good woman. I'm sure she knows how to pronounce "Warshington", but have you told her about the usefullness of 'y'all', or even 'you all'? That's a serious question because I've noted that 'y'all' is dying out among our young, and the valuable plural 'you' disappeared long ago in all other English dialects while being preserved in the South.
I like Lamesa personally. (It is La ME sa, not la MAY sa)
By the way, those in Houston know the real way to pronounce "Kuykendahl".
"Y'all" is not directly tied to Texas or just southern talk. That term is used frequently in the midwest. In New Jersey, it's "youz" instead of "y'all". New York and New England may be different.
I'm not sure what they say in California.
D .a. i. r. y.. Q. u. e. e. n
Texans will understand.
Interesting. As a native Houstonian, I don't ever recall hearing it pronounced without out the 'H'. Is that an inner loop thing, or maybe from Kaw-Coo-Coo-Kaw (KQQK, Latino station)?! Last I heard, it was still the San Jacinto monument("jah-sin-toe" not "ha-sin-toe").
Of course New Yorkers mess it up with their Houston Street ("how-stun" instead of "hue-stun"), but then New Yorkers mess up a lot of things. Wondering if the NY Times ever forgets the space in "Sugar Land" when attack DeLay? Which brings up another common error: Ronnie Earle is not pronounced "ron-ee earl", but "saw-ree-co-rupt-dem-crat-bass-turd")...
Texans will understand
LOL.......
Kirkendoll, of course! ;)
When I came down here, I was told "It's Burn-it, durn-it! Cantcha lurn-it???"
What's so stinking difficult about the pronunciation of New Braunfels??
I live in Bulverde... Still have to spell it everytime I order something over the phone. Then get into an argument. "Yes, Buhl-vuhr-dee is spelled Bulverde... get over it."
FGS
Don't forget Manor, Elgin and Montague County.
At least it's spelling isn't as bad as Pflugerville. I still have to look that up whenever I send anything to friends there.
D .a. i. r. y.. Q. u. e. e. n
Texans will understand.
LOL!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.