Celebrating the history of Y’all

You can take the boy out of Texas but you can’t take the Texas out of the boy.

Over our twenty-five years in a multi-cultural organization, I thought my speech patterns are not a dead give-a-way that we were from the southern U.S.

But when looking for a word to invite a group of people over to the house, nothing quite beats Y’ALL as in “Hope we see y’all on Saturday night.”  Or for that matter, y’all is the best when saying goodbye to a group as in “See y’all next week.” At least I don’t say, “howdy y’all” anymore–not that I ever did in the first place. But now I read that y’all likely originates from dear old Scotland and Ireland. Maybe that is why we get along with the Irish?  So, now, I can stand tall  when I say, “Y’all come back now.” Y’all has quite a proud heritage.

For more, check out “The Remarkable History of Y’all” on the Dialect Blog. As they say, “One word. Two continents. Three shores. Four centuries. Five separate dialects. Wow.”