I refuse to accept Texas' claim on y'all. Its a word collectively owned by everyone south of the mason-dixon line and I will fight to the death over this.
“You” is also ungendered. There seems to be a common idea that English is missing a second person plural. We have one, it’s “you”. We just stopped using the second person singular. That’s what all those variations of “thee, thou, thy” etc were.
“Y’all” would be a superpluralization. If that’s still not enough we also have the ultraplural form of, “all y’all”
Y'all was created to serve a completely artificial problem.
English has second person singular pronouns, but for some dumbfuck reason we've deprecated them. It's still maintained in the standard for compatibility with legacy literature but not recommended for new works. If thou talk'st this way, thy speech comes off as archaic/shakesperian/biblical. So we use the second person plural for everything. But this removes the ability to encode context on how many thou art addressing. "You! Go put that fire out." Are you talking to an individual in a group or the whole group?
So the American south turned "you" into the singular form and invented "you all" contracted to "y'all" for the plural form.
Now we just need to fix the first person plural problem, ie "We've just won the lottery!" Does "we" include the listener, or not? English doesn't encode that information; "we" don't have different words for "myself the speaker and the listener(s) and perhaps others" and "Myself the speaker, others, but not the listener."
I started using y'all years ago due to its ungenderedness, in part from being in queer spaces. Walking into a room of trans women and enbies and saying "you guys" felt weird.
If y'all spent as much time and energy on useless pronouns as y'all spent on advocating for universal healthcare, y'all could have gotten that last doctor visit paid for by y'alls gob'ment and not having to dip into y'alls savings.
I actually have been using y'all in this manner for about a decade. I found some women didn't appreciate being called "you guys" when I addressed a group of people.
Tbh, I've heard more y'alls in the San Francisco Bay Area than in Texas (I've live din both). Granted I lived in an immigrant-heavy place in Texas that I didn't even live in for that long.
I don't think conservatism is about being rational it's about maintaining tradition or maybe morality, however it was defined by the previous generation.
People should leave "y'all" alone. It doesn't belong to anyone. It is a natural contraction of "you" and "all" that several cultures have independently produced as part of their vernacular.
I'm Texan. I say y'all quite often. Subconsciously. But when I think about it, it always seems weird. Like if I TRY to use it then it always seems wrong.
I’ve been using it and it is an awesome non-gendered term. Being a native soutern cal-er you guys was my go to. I use you, y’all, all’y’alls, and folks
Its not woke. If its been around for awhile, its not woke. Woke words are new made up words or words used in a context to prove a progressive point.
"Trigger" is a woke word when you say "Im so triggered by that". However in this context "Johnny, do not pull down that lever, it will trigger the breaker box" is not woke.