Hey, youse!
Pat Churchill
*youse* as a plural of you. Typically the user might approach a group
of his friends and say *Hey, what are youse fellars doin'?* Or in
conversation someone might say *We do this, but youse do that.*
I have a vague recollection that back in the past *youse* was actually
plural for you. However, I cannot find the reference. Can any one of
youse jokers help? :) (BTW it's pronounced like *use*)
--
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The floggings will continue until morale improves
pch...@swell.actrix.gen.nz Pat Churchill, Wellington New Zealand
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Scott Larnach
>There is a tendency here among the less educated to use the word
>*youse* as a plural of you. Typically the user might approach a group
>of his friends and say *Hey, what are youse fellars doin'?*
> pch...@swell.actrix.gen.nz Pat Churchill, Wellington New Zealand
Scots and Scottish English have a distinct third person plural form
"youse" or "youze", and of course there's a fair bit of Scottish
influence in NZ. However, "youse" in Scots is apparently a modern
form; my dictionary gives it as 20th Century. I'm hesitant, therefore,
to draw any conclusion.
The other distinct third person plural form I can think of is "y'all".
No prizes for guessing what form of English that comes from.
Scott
F.Grant Whittle
plural second person, with _thou_ the subject case for
singlular and _thee_ the object case.
All that disappeared in the simplifying of English.
_Youse_ (seems to be northern U.S.) and _y'all_
(southern U.S.) are attempts to recomplicate the
simplification, indicating that losing a plural
second person wasn't such a good idea after all.
Best,
F. Grant
JJ...@psuvm.psu.edu
In article <CE75x...@actrix.gen.nz>, you say:
>
>There is a tendency here among the less educated to use the word
>*youse* as a plural of you. Typically the user might approach a group
>of his friends and say *Hey, what are youse fellars doin'?* Or in
>conversation someone might say *We do this, but youse do that.*
>
>I have a vague recollection that back in the past *youse* was actually
>plural for you. However, I cannot find the reference. Can any one of
>youse jokers help? :) (BTW it's pronounced like *use*)
>--
Actually, this question goes back to the Elizabethan English thread, and
beyond. The short answer is that everytime we use the word "you"
when referring to a single person we are committing a usage error
which would have driven the thirteenth century members of a usage
usenet group straight up the barbican. It's precisely along the order
of someone saying *now* "My mother cook real good." (As, in fact, some
dialects do.) Why this confusion of singular and plural? And where did
original ("correct") second person singular personal pronoun go? Enter
longer answer.
Some people blame it all on the Roman Empire. And although that particular
theory isn't certain, it's such a good read that it *ought* to be so. During
the Empire's long decline, the Romans hit on the organizational innovation
of dividing the Empire administratively between a Western and Eastern
capital (as if Los Angeles should become the capital of the US West, or
if Calcutta had become the capital of the British Empire East). The
organizational restructuring wasn't actually supposed to create two
separate Roman empires, each with its own Emperor, but the circulation
of power being what it is, that's what happened anyways.
So there's two Emperors in a purportedly singular Empire. When one
addresses the Emperor, one is addressing the *office* of the Emperor.
Since the office was now a twofer, this theory holds, either Emperor
would be addressed in the plural in _vos_ (the Latin equivilent of
youse guys). Well you know how people are with respect to snobbery.
If the pronoun "youse guys" is good enough for the Emperor in his
capital, then it's good enough for a Governor in his province. If
it's such a cool thing for them, then it must be de mode for Senators.
Give it enough time, and the cachet of being really chic, and pretty
soon every two-bit nobility or the moneyed up-and-coming will expect
the plural pronoun and the old fashioned Latin "youse guys" becomes
a Late Latin "polite form" too.
Things change and Latin too. [Latin 2?]
What used to be the Empire is a mess, and what used to be Latin is
becoming the Romance languages, and they've all got this odd "polite
form". If you're an esne maid, milking your cows and hanging out in
your hovel, and the local feudal lord happens by and rapes you, following
the best etiquette of the time you should refer to your ravager as
'youse guys", with your language's particular cognate of *vos*. You,
being a mere peasent, would be addressed as a singular "you", whatever
cognate of *tu* you've got. It must have been particularly gratifying
to the medieval male ego to know that each such rape was properly
spoken of as if it were a gang bang. You know...he's *more* man
than any mere singular pronoun can contain.
Okay, segue to the British Isles where you've got various Celtic
tribes craftily losing battles and territory to incursions of
Germans (or Danes and Frisians and other Grmanic relatives).
Neither Celt nor German has this verbal tic of the "polite plural".
When the monster, or queen, or comrade or lowly civil service coast
guard (probably draftee) talks to Beowulf they all use the only
pronoun that fits, the early forms of "thou". If you talk to the
king he isn't "your most magmuficent youse-guys-ness", he's just
"thou".
Linguistic snobbery, like sauteed vegetables, came in with the
French. The Normans pull out an old claim to the British throne,
hastily make good on it, and *voila!* the British ruling class is
suddenly French, and speaking like it. They bring along their
endearing little "vous" and by the time the English tongue gets
possession of the halls of power, we've lost most of our inflectional
endings and picked up this "thou"/"you" distinction.
The distinction could be subtle and revealing. By Shakespeare's time
one could indicate closeness and companionship by calling someone
"thou" (familiar) rather than "you". Remember Hamlet and his mother
Gertrude in the Queen's closet. She's trying to schmooze her boy
into calming down, he's got a serious relational problem with this
whole remarried mother/step-father thing. She says: "Hamlet, thou
hast thy father much offended." and he replies: "Mother, you have
my father much offended." He's not simply parroting her. He's
making his distance to her perfectly clear. That *you* is too
formal, too official, too "polite", to be anything other than a
rebuff at his mother's attempts towards familiarity.
Fast forward to the early nineteenth century, say Shelley's time, and
the only people who still retain this "thou" distinction, because they
are fartherst away from the centers of power and snobbery, are country
folk in rural England. So what had been, for centuries, a correct form
and in fact the *only* correct form, came to be marked as bumptious hill-
billy talk. "You" took over all the work of both singular and plural.
The problem is that the whole structure of Modern English grammar, all
of our nouns and verbs (pretty much) are marked for number. The logic
of our language insists on this singular/plural distinction. So there's
a sense in which a major "slot" of our grammatical categories, is empty.
Singular/plural is a fundamental structural feature: boy/boys; runs/run;
I/we; he/they; it/they; she/they; you.....huh?
So these recent attempts at reinventing a distinct second person plural
are "logical" with respect to our language's grammatical logical categories,
and, perhaps, inevitable despite the groans of purists. If so, then
my own vote is for my own hometown plural, yinse. WE CAN HELP THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE EVOLVE TO A BETTER TONGUE! USE "YINSE' WHENEVER YOU
NEED A PLURAL "YOU"!
My mother thanks yinse, my city thanks yinse, the future billions of
New English speakers thank yinse all!
..............................................................
Jason Charnesky < "We here reach a point
e-mail: JJ...@psuvm.psu.edu > of some obscurity."
BitNet: JJC10 at PSU < Jeff Nealon
F.Grant Whittle
Fascinating discourse about the Roman Empire, etc., deleted.
>
> So these recent attempts at reinventing a distinct second person plural
> are "logical" with respect to our language's grammatical logical categories,
> and, perhaps, inevitable despite the groans of purists. If so, then
> my own vote is for my own hometown plural, yinse. WE CAN HELP THE
> ENGLISH LANGUAGE EVOLVE TO A BETTER TONGUE! USE "YINSE' WHENEVER YOU
> NEED A PLURAL "YOU"!
>
> My mother thanks yinse, my city thanks yinse, the future billions of
> New English speakers thank yinse all!
> ..............................................................
> Jason Charnesky < "We here reach a point
> e-mail: JJ...@psuvm.psu.edu > of some obscurity."
> BitNet: JJC10 at PSU < Jeff Nealon
I'm wondering if Jason's _yinse_ is the same as my East Tennessee
relatives' _you'uns_. Having been uprooted by my parents to
Western Kentucky at a tender age, I learned the more common _y'all_.
(Note that W.Ky is completely different from E.Ky which is practically
the same as E.Tn.)
_You'uns_ is liable to sound to language snobs as even more
backward than _y'all_ and _youse_.
All this said, I should think that the notion that coming up wth
a plural second person isn't a mark of being uneducated, but
genuinely concerned that our language has a gaping hole in it
in need of filling.
F. Grant
eger...@vax.ox.ac.uk
In article <CE75x...@actrix.gen.nz>, pch...@swell.actrix.gen.nz (Pat Churchill) writes:
> There is a tendency here among the less educated to use the word
> *youse* as a plural of you. Typically the user might approach a group
> of his friends and say *Hey, what are youse fellars doin'?* Or in
> conversation someone might say *We do this, but youse do that.*
>
> I have a vague recollection that back in the past *youse* was actually
> plural for you. However, I cannot find the reference. Can any one of
> youse jokers help? :) (BTW it's pronounced like *use*)
For some reason, "youse" reminds me of the way they spoke in gangster
films of the 30s. I can just hear Edward G. Robinson or James Cagney
saying it, although I don't know if they ever did.
Kari
Chris Malcolm
>In article <CE75x...@actrix.gen.nz>, you say:
>>There is a tendency here among the less educated to use the word
>>*youse* as a plural of you. Typically the user might approach a group
>>of his friends and say *Hey, what are youse fellars doin'?* Or in
>>conversation someone might say *We do this, but youse do that.*
Why do yous guys spell it "youse" with an "e" on the end? Is it
because you're Americanse?-)
>my own vote is for my own hometown plural, yinse. WE CAN HELP THE
>ENGLISH LANGUAGE EVOLVE TO A BETTER TONGUE! USE "YINSE' WHENEVER YOU
>NEED A PLURAL "YOU"!
Why "yinse" with an "e"? I don't think this is a suitable plural for
"you", because it happens already to be Scots for "ones", as in "yous
yins" meaning "you ones", the singular of which is "you yin". This is
in common use today.
--
Chris Malcolm c...@uk.ac.ed.aifh +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK DoD #205
JJ...@psuvm.psu.edu
says:
>>my own vote is for my own hometown plural, yinse. WE CAN HELP THE
>>ENGLISH LANGUAGE EVOLVE TO A BETTER TONGUE! USE "YINSE' WHENEVER YOU
>>NEED A PLURAL "YOU"!
>
>Why "yinse" with an "e"? I don't think this is a suitable plural for
>"you", because it happens already to be Scots for "ones", as in "yous
>yins" meaning "you ones", the singular of which is "you yin". This is
>in common use today.
>--
legitimacy, suggesting earlier forms which had inflectional
endings. Also, I've never seen the word in print (it's
incorrect in writing) so I had to come up with _some_
spelling. In my neck of the North Side the final /z/ of
"yinse" is aspirated somewhat more than the final sound of
"fins". And also, frankly, "yins" (an admitedly odd word
to begin with) looked too much like something from a list
of ingredients to chow mein.
I think the fact that the word might be traced to
Scotland gives it immense prestige. All the truly
romantic aspects of British culture are Celtic. Think
Arthur in Avalon, or Lord Bruce in Abyssinia.
A word used both in Edinburgh and Pittsburgh? What more
evidence do we need that "yinse" is truly the "world English"
form of plural you. (Now, if I can only convince a few
speakers of English anywhere in the world....)
Peter Wignell
The use of 'youse' as a second person plural pronoun is also common in
Australia and is a social rather than regional feature. I suspect that it
might have originated in Irish English since it seems common there as well.
As in the US, a large section of the Australian population is of Irish
origin. Re the history of 'youse'. I think it is relatively modernish
(meaning I don't know) and has evolved to fill a gap in the English pronoun
system.
Conan the Grammarian
Raphael mankin
>So these recent attempts at reinventing a distinct second person plural
>are "logical" with respect to our language's grammatical logical categories,
>and, perhaps, inevitable despite the groans of purists. If so, then
>my own vote is for my own hometown plural, yinse. WE CAN HELP THE
>ENGLISH LANGUAGE EVOLVE TO A BETTER TONGUE! USE "YINSE' WHENEVER YOU
>NEED A PLURAL "YOU"!
>
>My mother thanks yinse, my city thanks yinse, the future billions of
>New English speakers thank yinse all!
My mother, being a Glaswegian, always said "youse yins" for the plural "you".
--
Raphael Mankin There is now, I undertand, a porch to walk out
onto when you open the door I opened that night,
but there wasn't then.
- James Thurber
John Colville
I had a university lecturer who would end his honours class lectures with,
"I'll see youse blokes later."
This struck me as odd, even then.
Our class consisted of three students, me an anglo male, an Australian girl
and a Singapore Chinese man.
I think of "blokes" as male. The Chinese probably didn't understand the
sentence. So, probably two out of three of us were not being addressed.
John Colville
colv...@socs.uts.edu.au
bruce bowser
> There is a tendency here among the less educated to use the word
> *youse* as a plural of you. Typically the user might approach a group
> of his friends and say *Hey, what are youse fellars doin'?* Or in
> conversation someone might say *We do this, but youse do that.*
> I have a vague recollection that back in the past *youse* was actually
> plural for you. However, I cannot find the reference. Can any one of
> youse jokers help? :) (BTW it's pronounced like *use*)
bil...@shaw.ca
not help this dying news group. It makes it worse. Please don't do that.
bill
