“Today, you are you,” Dr. Seuss sagely told us. Seems axiomatic enough.
Or does it? “You” is such a little and usually unnoticed word. Its context seems narrow enough, but it has caused much discussion and argument. Its use sometimes makes our language unclear. Attempts to clarify often make people feel angry or, worse, uncomfortable, or, worst of all, invisible. The problem is simple: we have one word that functions as both singular and plural. The solution, however, is far from simple.
The problem isn’t new. It probably began when English speakers stopped using “thou,” which was once reserved for the singular form. That big change didn’t exactly happen yesterday, so you’d think we English speakers might have dealt adequately with it by now. But no.
Because the single word, “you,” functions as both singular and plural, it follows that this could cause at least occasional confusion. Imagine a group situation where the speaker says something benign such as I would like you to jump up and down while imitating a wombat. If the speaker is looking directly at an individual, that could be interpreted as addressing ONLY that individual in a room that is full of people. Easy enough. But what if the speaker just HAPPENS to be looking in the general direction of one person. Then, there’s that inevitable awkwardness of having to say, Oh, no, I meant ALL OF YOU, NOT JUST YOU (along with awkward pointing, not to mention the poor, lone wombat imitator).
This is a gap in English that clearly needs to be filled, yet resistance to that filling continues without an end in sight. There is no shortage of discussion on the matter and most people agree that English NEEDS a way to easily refer to ALL of you, not just ONE of you. How can it be that everyone agrees on the need, but can’t agree on the solution?
Most people living in the southern portion of the United States have had a good solution for a very long time. “Y’all” (or even “You all”) works well. Perfectly well. I like it so much that I, a northerner, went through a long period when I tried to incorporate it into my regular usage. It worked for me. I knew that I was making myself clear in that regard. That ended when I was mocked by a person from the south who implied that I was both appropriating and condescending. A colleague of mine (a northerner, but a longtime resident of the south) also used “y’all” regularly in her classes. Reactions to the usage often showed up in her course evaluations as a strong negative. Her students thought it was “weird,” “stupid,” “odd,” “pretentious,” and a few other things. So, okay, as useful as it is, northerners can’t use “y’all.” Too bad. It’s easy to say, has all familiar parts (“you” and “all”), and easily indicates the plural.
What about “yous,” “youse,” or “youz”? The meaning of these is clear, and the familiar pluralizing morpheme (“s”) is right there. Go ahead. Try using one of these anywhere other than a few mid-Atlantic states in the US. While we’re thinking about that region, I should mention “you-uns,” and “yinz” which I hear are regularly used in Pittsburgh to indicate the plural. I can’t confirm it. I can, however, confirm that all of these words are considered to be regionalisms and, therefore, as unlikely to catch on with the general population as “y’all.”
Other proposals include “(you) people” and “(you) folks” as plural forms of address. These remain very unpopular choices. “You people” carries much bigoted baggage with it; “people” is often heard as too authoritative and patronizing; and “folks” seems, well, too folksy. In my opinion, these choices make “y’all” sound pretty good by comparison.
There is one phrase that some believe to be the solution to the problem. It has been around a long time and has been the source of much discussion and controversy. The term, “you guys” has wormed itself into the language and is considered by many (by no means by all) to be gender-neutral and perfect to fill this plural “you” gap. For some speakers, the use of “you guys” has become the natural way of speaking. Those speakers likely do not intend it to be exclusive to males even though the word “guy” has designated a male ever since Guy Fawkes (who was, in fact, a pretty bad guy). According to Alan Metcalf in his The Life of Guy: Guy Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot, and the Unlikely History of an Indispensable Word, the history of “guy” (long a synonym for “man,” thus begging the question) makes it a likely candidate for an actual NEW pronoun to be added to the language. Metcalf claims that, in the singular, “guy” remains exclusively masculine, but takes on a more neutral meaning in the plural. He describes it as an informal version of “Ladies and Gentlemen.” He further points out that a stylized mask of Guy Fawkes has become the symbol of the Occupy Movement, certainly not specific to males and so, he claims, supports the gender-neutral usage.
A substantial portion of the population cries foul here. The history of the word does not, in fact, include females. Plain and simple. No matter how many people use it and don’t MEAN to exclude females, many females FEEL excluded when addressed as “You guys.” It doesn’t matter if the group being addressed is exclusively female or mixed gender. If the specific audience meant to be INCLUDED feels EXCLUDED, I hope you’ll agree the solution has not been found even if the speaker has no intent of sexism or exclusion.
English still needs a good, lasting form of plural “you,” a way to address a group of people easily and naturally without offending any member. It must be gender neutral, formal as well as informal, and not attributable to a specific region. This has been a topic of discussion for YEARS, and no satisfying solution has emerged. What rolls easily off the tongue of some speakers blares in the ears of some listeners. We are obviously far from a solution. Some have proposed the invention of a whole new word. We discussed earlier that new, invented words historically have a very short life, when they arise in a closed, narrow category of words such as pronouns.
In addition to “y’all,” and for whatever it’s worth, I have a personal soft spot for “yous.” It feels good. It easily rolls off the tongue. There’s no way it can be construed as gender-specific and no way it can be mistaken as singular. I can get over the regional feel. Anyone with me?
DOING LANGUAGE 