Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 10:47:06 CST

From: Dennis Baron debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UIUC.EDU

Subject: Re: y'all singular, not!



In Message Mon, 24 Jan 1994 10:17:02 -0500,

"William A. Kretzschmar, Jr." billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu writes:



Not not!



I, too, had been laboring under the impression that y'all was plural,

never having heard an undeniable counterexample (my wife says she hears

such examples all the time in the hospitals she works in, but that is

still anecdotal evidence even if I consider it reliable).



Now all is changed. My dept. head, a native of College Park, GA, with

Ph.D. from U of South Carolina, used "y'all" to me in reference to a

personnel matter where I personally was the only subject.



Hallelujah, I'm now a true believer in the singularity (possible, at

least) of y'all.



******************************************************************************

Bill Kretzschmar Phone: 706-542-2246

Dept. of English FAX: 706-542-2181

University of Georgia Internet: billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hyde.park.uga.edu

Athens, GA 30602-6205 Bitnet: wakjengl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga



Bill,



Surely Hugh was just being polite, referring to you and anyone like

you who might have a similar personnel issue to discuss, or perhaps

he was referring to you and your family, or to you and the rest of the

faculty who are plaguing him with personnel matters when he'd rather

be sipping mint juleps, or perhaps he assumes you have a multiple

personality (we used to call it code switching). But we all know

that singular y'all is a Yankee myth concocted by sociolinguists

to discredit atlas workers. As they say in New Hampshire, live free

or die.



Cheers.



Dennis

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