The problem with y’all…

I got gently berated by a reader today: “Kanthan I love your tweets but please cut out this terrible y'all term. It grates.”

I sympathise; it can trigger a stereotype (accurate in this case) of the American South, as noted here:

Whenever someone wants to make fun of a Southern person or try their accent on for size, both in real life and in the movies, their first phrase will be "y'all." People love to mock Southern folks for using "y'all" in their everyday vocabulary.

The reason why I use “y’all” is because I can’t use “you”. Essentially, it comes down to pronouns, and it’s a problem with the English language. 

Most languages differentiate between singular pronouns and plural pronouns. Example: “I” is first person singular, and “we’ is first person plural. “He” or “she” is third person singular, “they” is third person plural.

But what about second person singular versus second person plural? Ah, that’s my problem. Consider these:

Language	Second Person Singular	Second Person Plural
Afrikaans	jy	julle
French	tu	vous
Italian	tu	voi
Tamil (my mother tongue)	நீ (Nī)	நீங்கள் (Nīṅkaḷ)
Zulu	wena	nonke

In English, there’s only one word for both: “you”.

It didn’t always used to be that way. Back in the day, the most basic verb “to be”, was conjugated like so:

	Singular	Plural
First person	I am	We are
Second person	Thou art	You are
Third person	He is / She is	They are

Yes, back in the day, I could say “thou art mistaken” which would refer to one person, or “you are mistaken” which would refer to more than one person.

As a writer, I differentiate between one person (“You, gentle reader”) or many people (“You are woke f*ckheads”). Now in this case, the plural of the second group is obvious, but not so when I say: “You don’t know what you are talking about”. By saying, “y’all don’t know what y’all are talking about,” I address that unambiguously.

I trust y’all are happy now. ?