>>I remember my ex telling me about discovering the Spanish "Vosotros" and saying, HEY! There's a word for "y'all"! <<
There is a distinct need for a second person plural that isn't the same word as the second person singular, and RP/American RP doesn't seem to get that. Y'all is a good one because there's a slider scale of plurality. You (singular), Y'all(plural non-expansive), and All Y'all (plural expansive). So 'you' is one person, the addressed, 'y'all' is more than one person, but just the addressed, and 'all y'all' is all the people being addressed and anyone they consider direct expansions of social self regardless of presence to be addressed. So inviting y'all to a party means you don't get plus ones, just the people standing in front of me as I ask, but inviting all y'all to a party means even if I'm on the phone with only one person, I mean their household.
>>I am learning more and more that just because it's not RP (or the American equivalent) don't mean it ain't no proper English. Such claims are the kind of absurdity up with which we will not put! <<
Well said! Dialects have their place, and in my book, if I can say it and you can understand what I meant, then it's proper enough. Walk into an area where everyone shares a dialect and bust out the RP, you may not get understood, which makes it not proper enough in that case. Actually, I'd say most RP speakers can understand most dialectic terms, even if they somewhat loses connotations, but the sheer density of Entirely Proper RP English can make it gibberish to someone who primarily or exclusively speaks dialectic English, which renders RP the less effective (and thereby, for my standards, less valid) language. It doesn't communicate as widely as the dialects do. It just happens to be the one that a bunch of classist snobs decided was 'best'. (Now that I think of it, that may be why the snobs liked it, it's an inaccessible frankenlanguage that requires way too much formal schooling to comprehend.)
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mmmag
YES!
Date: 2019-02-11 09:24 pm (UTC)There is a distinct need for a second person plural that isn't the same word as the second person singular, and RP/American RP doesn't seem to get that. Y'all is a good one because there's a slider scale of plurality. You (singular), Y'all(plural non-expansive), and All Y'all (plural expansive). So 'you' is one person, the addressed, 'y'all' is more than one person, but just the addressed, and 'all y'all' is all the people being addressed and anyone they consider direct expansions of social self regardless of presence to be addressed. So inviting y'all to a party means you don't get plus ones, just the people standing in front of me as I ask, but inviting all y'all to a party means even if I'm on the phone with only one person, I mean their household.
>>I am learning more and more that just because it's not RP (or the American equivalent) don't mean it ain't no proper English. Such claims are the kind of absurdity up with which we will not put! <<
Well said! Dialects have their place, and in my book, if I can say it and you can understand what I meant, then it's proper enough. Walk into an area where everyone shares a dialect and bust out the RP, you may not get understood, which makes it not proper enough in that case. Actually, I'd say most RP speakers can understand most dialectic terms, even if they somewhat loses connotations, but the sheer density of Entirely Proper RP English can make it gibberish to someone who primarily or exclusively speaks dialectic English, which renders RP the less effective (and thereby, for my standards, less valid) language. It doesn't communicate as widely as the dialects do. It just happens to be the one that a bunch of classist snobs decided was 'best'. (Now that I think of it, that may be why the snobs liked it, it's an inaccessible frankenlanguage that requires way too much formal schooling to comprehend.)