A Victory for Y’all?

August 19, 2025
Posted by Jay Livingston

I thought I’d given up blogging, but when a legitimate source — in this case NPR — says something that is just flat-out wrong, I can’t help myself. 

It was on All Things Considered about a month ago, a piece by Bill Chappel (here) on the word y’all. It begins:

Sorry, yinz. Fuhgeddaboudit, you guys: In the past 20 years or so, “y’all”  has gone from being a Southernism to become America's favorite way to use the second person plural, according to linguists. “Y'all has won,”  says Paul E. Reed, a linguist at the University of Alabama who studies Southern American English and Appalachian English. “It’s expanded much more outside of the South”  among people who are under 40 years old, he says.

One thing that he says is true. Younger people outside the South have picked up y’all, probably because it sounded cool when they heard Black people use it. But they use  it only as a “vocative” stand-alone like “Hey, y’all”  Or as in this photo — from a LPGA Classic in Mobile, AL — that accompanies the online version of the NPR piece.

More likely they will use it for emphasis or almost a challenge. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about, y’all.” 
But non-Southerners do not use it as part of a clause in a sentence. They do not say, as a true Southerner might, “What did y’all do last night?” or “It’s good to see y’all again.”

No, the victory y’all has won is very limited. The real winner is “you guys.” That’s what we, especially those under fifty (I’m guessing), use when we want to distinguish second person plural (you guys) from second person singular (you). 

I find it hard to believe that the academic linguists Chappell consulted did not make this distinction. I have no formal training in linguistics, so I checked with Claude.AI, who agreed with me and went a bit further.

This is a perfect example of how linguistic claims can sound authoritative but miss crucial distinctions in actual usage patterns. The article treats “y’all” as if it has fully replaced other plural forms across all grammatical contexts, when in reality its spread has been much more limited - primarily to vocative/address functions rather than becoming a true grammatical replacement for plural “you.”

Institutions as Guard Rails

November 6, 2024
Posted by Jay Livingston

Half a score and seven years ago, I said something (here) that I am now rethinking:

Authoritarianism has always had some allure to some Americans, especially in times of crisis. In the Depression, people like Huey Long and Father Coughlin played to this sentiment with some success. But in the end they failed, and most people today have never heard of them. To some extent, it’s because of the eventual good sense of the American people. But more likely, our success in avoiding a Godfather government stems from the enduring institutions of our society and government. [emphasis added]

Now I am not at all sure about those institutions.

I was blogging in response to a HuffPo piece by Philip Slater, who was dismayed by the popularity of Mafia media — The Godfather, The Sopranos, Goodfellas, etc.

Americans love the mafia because it represents a totally authoritarian system in which mistrust, cynicism, slavish obedience, and rash, violent decisions prevail. That seems to be the kind of world most Americans are looking for today.

But Slater was thinking not just about the movies but about real-world politics as well:  “Americans were so willing to elect and re-elect the most secretive, despotic, and anti-democratic administration in the history of our nation.” He was talking about George W. Bush.

My take then was that what we like to see on the screen is not always what we want in real life.

Here is a system that rewards its virtues —loyalty, respect, honor — and punishes transgressions surely and swiftly. If your real world is full of uncertainty and moral ambiguity, if virtue is not always rewarded and wickedness not always punished, you might take comfort at the end of the day in the unclouded vision of the media’s mafias.

Now I’m thinking about that final sentence of my 2007 post, the one about “the enduring institutions of our society and government” that might act as guard rails.

America has now a elected a man who has already tried, with some success, to undermine or dominate the institutions that might constrain him — the courts and the rule of law, the legislature and the electoral process, the media. And he has promised to use the full powers of the presidency to continue this project, replacing the professionals in federal agencies with people chosen not for their experise and competence but for their loyalty.

What institutions are left?

The Party's Over

September 21, 2024
Posted by Jay Livingston

“Two pair wahr,” said the young woman next to me in the Place Aristide Briand in Carpentras. We were both there for the marché aux truffes, a truffle market held every Friday morning in the cold months. The waitress at the restaurant Thursday night had told me about it, so Friday morning I was up early to make the half-hour drive. I was early. A few dozen people were standing in a loose circle. The farmers, with their baskets of truffles and their hand-held balance scales, stood in the center. At 8:45, someone blew a whistle and trading started.

I had come just to see the market and take some photos, but I started talking with a couple of young women standing near me, and after a few minutes they were helping me buy a half kilo of truffles. I told them that I wanted to take them back to my friend in Paris, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to keep them for several days in the paper bag I was now holding.
    
They told me that I should go to the grocery store and get some rice, then to the droguerie (housewares store) and get “two pair wahr.” My so-so French had been adequate to the task so far, but here was a French word I did not understand. “Two pair wahr,” she repeated, and mimed prying a lid off a container.

Tupperware. Of course. You put the truffles in and fill it with rice. It won’t smell up the car, and when you do get back to Paris, whatever dish you decide to use the truffles in,, you’ll also have the best tasting rice you’ve ever had,

It was the only piece of Tupperware I ever bought.

Last week, Tupperware filed for bankruptcy.

Jeopardy III: Losing Their Religion. Again.

July 1, 2023
Posted by Jay Livingston

I didn’t see this when it happened nearly three weeks ago. None of the three Jeopardy contestants knew “hallowed be thy name.”



Nor, until now, was I aware of the distress and outrage it provoked.

For me, it was déja vu.

I was on Jeopardy fifty years ago. At the studio, before the taping began, they had some of the contestants do a practice round. Presumably, this was to help us feel comfortable with the cameras and lights and other aspects of the set. I was not one of those selected, so I sat nearby and watched. One of the categories on the board was The Bible.

“OK, let’s go,” came the voice from the control room. They ran through a few questions, and then a contestant, after answering a question correctly, asked for The Bible.

The plate with “$10"* on it slid up revealing the question which the host then read: “In the Book of Matthew, he says, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

Silence. Nobody rang in. Then over the speakers came the deep voice from the control room: “They don’t come any easier in this category, people.”

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* Yes, $10. The dollar values of questions then were 1/20 what they are now. For more on my Jeopardy appearances, see these earlier posts.

Not Ken Jennings, But . . .

Jeopardy II: Audiences — à la Goffman and ABC-TV