Slang contraction for the 2nd person plural pronoun, utilized amongst the indigenous populations of the southern continental United States.
Origin: Often incorrectly attributed to the contraction of "you + all," the word actually originated from the fusing of " ya + all." The kind of fella who would say ya'll for the first time would not be enunciating a clean and crisp "you" in his daily speech. "You" wasn't in his spoken vocabulary, but " ya" was. Now, try to say "ya all." It is actually not easy to do as two separate words. To say it with a normal cadence, it already almost sounds like ya'll, but with the slightest stutter. "Ya all" quite naturally slips into the familiar pronoun we all use. Ya + all = ya'll. When you look at it that way, the placement of the apostrophe after the "a" makes sense. Alternately, you + all = y'all. However, the ya + all transition more naturally illustrates the origin of "ya'll." "You all" is cumbersome, although that is usually how yall is explained to uninitiated Yankees, whose experience with " ya" is often limited. "You a... |
