Talk:Southern American English

Y'all go "y'all" wrong. It's singular

The citation offered for calling "y'all" a plural pronoun does not actually say any such thing. In truth "y'all" is a singular collective term. Compare a SCHOOL of fish, a HERD of antelope, a PRIDE of lions, a PACK of wolves, a CONGREGATION of worshipers, a CAST of characters, etc. As this page itself points out, "all y'all" is the plural form of "y'all." "All y'all" is used for groups of groups. For example, "Y'all over here say 'star,' and y'all over here say 'wars' and that way all y'all together will be saying 'Star Wars.'" I am editing accordingly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.121.192.199 (talk) 17:41, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

You're saying that "y'all" is a collective noun? What? That is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I've seen on Wikipedia and is in direct disagreement with the Wikipedia page for "y'all", which describes it truthfully as a second-person plural pronoun. Badvpnuser (talk) 22:09, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Celtic or Germanic or what?

Does the southern drawl come from ethnic southern celtic people's way of speaking or from germanic people's way of speaking? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.79.178.4 (talk) 15:51, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

It's rather late to answer, but I think the best answer to your question is neither; the 'southern drawl' or the modern dialect is a relatively new phenomenon, with most of its notable features only appearing in the past 100 years with little to no record prior. Some of its modern features are from Southwest Irish English such as the pin-pen merger, use of 'do be' as a marker of habitual aspect, and (for some speakers) th-stopping. But by and large, most of its features are speech innovations instead of inheritances from an older phonology (though many pre-world war dialects had other Irish-born features such as monophthongal FACE /eː/ and GOAT /oː/ vowels, pronouncing some words spelled <ea> with the /eː/ vowel instead of modern standard /iː/, and others with less or no documentation). As for the idea of it coming at all from any one group's way of speaking- just remember that dialects follow immigration patterns, so stating it as an "or"-type question doesn't really work for these things.

Anyway, hope that answer is satisfactory! LinguaNerd (talk) 14:44, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

"Country accent" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Country accent and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 December 29#Country accent until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:41, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Sure in /ʊər/ set

It makes more sense to group post-alveolars with palatals with how they're treated in sound changes. Is there a more elegant way of clearly communicating this relation in the table? And if we do not create a separate category for the palatal/post-alveolar class as a whole with this vowel, why make one for /jʊər/ specifically? LinguaNerd (talk) 02:38, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

"Tell-say" reduplication

As a native of the Charleston metro (I state this in case this is instead specific to Charlestonian English, the Carolinas-Georgia lowlands region, etc.), I often hear people, usually older speakers, follow a transitive "tell" clause (with the patient being the person who'll be spoken to) with another "say" clause (with the patient being what's going to be said). Something like:

• "I told him, I said 'What the hell are you talking about?'"
• "Tell her, say 'I ain't gonna hurt ya!'"

This isn't just what any English speaker would do, with two seemingly seperable clauses (as one could optionally replace the comma with a period, thus making "I told him." its own independent sentence; the construction I'm talking about appears to make the "tell" clause dependent on the "say" clause, as they always come in tandem). The way it's said, it's more like an odd semantically-reduplicative construction: One would use this the same as they would use just a single "tell" or "say" clause.

I'll admit, this is all by personal experience; I don't have any literature or online sources to back up what I'm describing. 2600:1700:2DA1:C20F:EA90:27F1:90FB:F029 (talk) 08:44, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

In my experience this also occurs outside of the South. Sometimes other words are used. An example I heard in New York: "I says to him, I says, 'That's stupid'". We'd need a reliable source that this only occurs in the South. Sundayclose (talk) 16:37, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Examples of famous non-rhotic speakers

We could include George Wallace and Bull Connor as examples of famous Alabamians who spoke in a non-rhotic accent that I believe is extinct in the state now, apart from among its black inhabitants of course. We could even do the same for the Texan country singer Tex Ritter. I suspect such Texan accents died out not long after the 40s when he was singing and such Alabamian accents died out not long after the 60s when Wallace and Cooper were about. Of course this would be original research without referring to an academic source describing these people as non-rhotic but the fact that they were can easily be discerned by watching YouTube videos. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:04, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Split

As this article heads towards 10,000 words, it seems a reasonable time to split it. I think probably the phonological information has the most to get split to its own new page, Southern accent (United States) [going by WP:COMMONNAME], while the rest of the dialect's information can remain at this page. Others' thoughts? (This, for example, precisely mirrors the split between New York City English and New York accent.) Wolfdog (talk) 15:18, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I need somebody with authority to clean up the y'all mess

The y'all section seems to originally be this, well-sourced (and accurate, as a native y'all user) (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Southern_American_English&oldid=1247583251):

Y'all is a second-person plural pronoun and the usual Southern plural form of the word you. It is originally a contraction – you all – which is used less frequently. This term was popularized in modern Southern dialects and was rarely used in older Southern dialects.

• When addressing a group, y'all in general (I know y'all) is used to address the group as a whole, whereas all y'all is used to emphasize the specificity of every member of the group ("I know all y'all.") The possessive form of Y'all is created by adding the standard "-'s".

  "I've got y'all's assignments here." /jɔlz/

• Y'all is distinctly separate from the singular you. The statement "I gave y'all my truck payment last week," is more precise than "I gave you my truck payment last week." You(if interpreted as singular) could imply the payment was given directly to the person being spoken to – when that may not be the case.
• "All y'all" is used to specify that all members of the second person plural (i.e., all persons currently being addressed and/or all members of a group represented by an addressee) are included; that is, it operates in contradistinction to "some of y'all", thereby functioning similarly to "all of you" in standard English.
• In rural southern Appalachia an "n" is added to pronouns indicating "one" "his'n" "his one" "her'n" "her one" "Yor'n" "your one" i.e. "his, her, and your". Another example is yernses. It may be substituted for the 2nd person plural possessive yours.

  "That book is yernses." /ˈjɜrnzəz/

An IP came through and rewrote the section while reusing or deleting sources, and turned it into nonsense, leaving a topic on the talk page as well (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Southern_American_English&oldid=1252512090):

The citation offered for calling "y'all" a plural pronoun does not actually say any such thing. In truth "y'all" is a singular collective term. Compare a SCHOOL of fish, a HERD of antelope, a PRIDE of lions, a PACK of wolves, a CONGREGATION of worshipers, a CAST of characters, etc. As this page itself points out, "all y'all" is the plural form of "y'all." "All y'all" is used for groups of groups. For example, "Y'all over here say 'star,' and y'all over here say 'wars' and that way all y'all together will be saying 'Star Wars.'" I am editing accordingly.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.121.192.199 (talk) 17:41, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Y'all is a second-person singular pronoun that used to refer to a single group. It is originally a contraction – you all.

• When addressing a single group collectively y'all is used.
• When addressing multiple distinct groups, all y'all is used ("I know all y'all.")
• The possessive form of Y'all is created by adding the standard "-'s" as in: "I've got y'all's assignments here." /jɔlz/

I responded to the talk page topic and amateurly removed the nonsense, leaving the reference to the Wikipedia page for Y'all. I realize that I should have reverted the edit or something instead ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Southern_American_English&oldid=1269886208):

You're saying that "y'all" is a collective noun? What? That is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I've seen on Wikipedia and is in direct disagreement with the Wikipedia page for "y'all", which describes it truthfully as a second-person plural pronoun. Badvpnuser (talk) 22:09, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

→Y'all: I got rid of the two-month-standing claim that "y'all" is a collective noun.

@Sundayclose reverted my edit:

Undid revision 1269886208 by Badvpnuser(talk) It's described as a pronoun, not a noun. And it's reliably sourced.

So it's now back to the IP's nonsense. Badvpnuser (talk) 19:49, 7 November 2025 (UTC)