2021-04-01 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด Y – you & your

Revision M-Z

2021-04-01

ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด Y – you & your

แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น

ความหมาย อาจผันแปร ตาม ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค

Dictionary.com

ออกเสียง you = ‘YOO’ (unstressed = ‘yoo’ or ‘YUH’)

ออกเสียง – possessive of ‘YOU’ = your 

ออกเสียง your = ‘YOOR’ or “YAWR’ or ‘YOHR’

Dictionary.com

USAGE NOTE FOR YOU

In American English the pronoun you has been supplemented by

additional forms to make clear the distinction between singular and plural.

You-all, often pronounced as one syllable, is a widespread spoken form

in the South Midland and Southern United States.

Its possessive is often you-all's rather than your.

You-uns (from you + ones ) is a South Midland form

most often found in uneducated speech;

it is being replaced by you-all.

Youse (you + the plural -s ending of nouns),

probably of Irish-American origin, is most common in the North,

especially in urban centers like Boston, New York, and Chicago.

It is rare in educated speech.

You guys is a common informal expression among younger speakers;

it can include all people regardless of sex or even a group of women

only. See also me.

Dictionary.com

What Are All Of The Different Ways To Pluralize "You"?

TRANSCRIPT

What’s up you guys?!Or wait, should it be what’s up y’all?

Well, I guess it all really depends on your personal preference

and also, more importantly, what region you hail from.

Let’s break down all of the ways you can address the plural you.

Up first, we have old faithful- “you guys”.

Like… hey, do you guys remember that scene in the Goonies where Sloth yells “HEY YOU GUYS?!?!”

Man, I still love that movie (lost in thought).

But anyway, I digress.

People have been saying the phrase “you guys”

to address a mixed-gendered group of people for a long time,

but lately, this usage has been called into question

as some believe it is not gender-inclusive.

Ok, fair enough.

Let’s take a look at some of our other options.

Up next, we have the southern plural of you

which is “y’all”or even all y’all”…

which is a contraction of the words you and all.

If you are from the New York area,

you might be a big fan of yous, youse, and youse guys…

or gals, of course.

If you think all of that is interesting,

get a lot of this

– in the Appalachian and Western Pennsylvania region of the United States,

they came up with the word “yinz”

in order to address the plural you.

How on earth did they come up with that?!

Well, it most likely was derived from “you ones”,

which came from Irish-American speakers in the 19th century,

switching to using English and being confused

by the lack of singular second-person pronouns,

which Gaelic has in the form of tú, as well as a plural form, sibh.

Because who needs all those pesky extra letters and apostrophes

when trying to quickly address a room full of people?!

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

How did you becomesingular?

The history of the pronoun you

provides a good example of the effect

social forces can have on the language.

Originally, the pair ye and you was used

along with thee and thou to refer to people in the second person,

ye and you for plural and thee and thou for singular.

You began as the grammatical object,

used in the following ways:

I see you sitting there together.

I gave you six apples, three for each.

These uses are knownrespectively as the accusative and dative cases.

The singularfor this use would be thee:

For thee there are three apples.

Of thee I sing.

When the second person plural was used

as a grammatical subject, ye was used.

Seek and ye shall find.

This use is called the nominative case. The singular for this use would be thou:

How great thou art.

As far back as the 14th century,

the plural forms ye and you began to be used to address one person

—usually a superior—as a mark of deference and respect.

This changecould have been influenced by

the first-person plural we (the royal “we”)

used by sovereigns or reflected the impact of French politeness

at work in Middle English.

Once this usage of the polite plural began, it gradually grew.

This is where social forces came into play:

once people beginsuch a use, it must grow,

since people would rather be polite than risk offending others

in cases of doubt.

As the use of the plural increased,

the singular use decreased accordingly:

by the beginning of the 17th century,

thou and thee marked only an intimate or personal relationship

or a superior-to-inferior relationship.

It was even sometimes used to show deliberate disrespect.

Queen Elizabeth I seems to have used only you in writing,

and a user of her prestige must have given you a boost.

By about the middle of the 16th century

the contrast in function between ye and you began breaking down,

with the effect that you was more frequently used

as a subject pronoun as use of ye decreased.

The loss of thee and thou

—a singular pronoun for everyday use

—was clearly noticed by English speakers.

Initially, the distinction between singular you and plural you

was signaled by verb agreement;

you was for the singular continued in polite if informal use

well into the 18th century before it lost respectability.

Special plural formswere later contrived

to hold you chiefly to singular use,

such as you-all , you-uns, yez, and youse.

None of them became standard.

So, the simple social drive of good mannershas

in a few centuries completely remade

the second person pronoun in English.

No doubt the social pressures of today

will work changes in the language as well.

The chances are, however,

that most changes they bring about will not be rapid.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Usage Notes

When Is It'You and I' or 'You and Me'?

Some pronoun advice for you (and her and him and them).

Native speakers are pronoun experts.

We (we is a pronoun here referring to native speakers

including yours truly)

understand them (them is a pronoun referring to pronouns)

easily and employ them (there it is again;

it is another pronoun, here referring to the word them)

without much need for examination.

(A reminder:

a pronounis a word used instead of a noun or noun phrase

that has either already been mentioned

or does not need to be named specifically.)

Pronoun use is in factproof of our facility with the language

—we so often get them right, and they're not simple things.

No one says"Us so often get them right,"

or "We so seldom get they wrong."

But in a particular type of environment,

pronoun usecan wander from its predicted territory,

as writer and humorist James Thurber noted:

I have been planning a piece on personal pronouns

and the death of the accusative.

Nobody says "I gave it to they," but "me" is almost dead,

and I have heard its dying screams from Bermuda to Columbus:

"He gave it to Janey and I." ... My cousin Earl Fisher said it to me in Columbus, "Louise and I gave it to he and she last Christmas."
— letter, 25 June 1956

Thurber has a point, and more than half a century later

we're still seeing the same kind of thing that bothered him so much.

Let's take a closer look at Thurber's objections.

In both of the examples he gives,

the questionable pronounsare members of a compound phrase

—that is, a phrase that has more than one distinct part.

In the first it's Janey and I:

He gave it to Janey and I.

What's wrong with this sentence?

It might look perfectly fine at first,

but if we simplify the compound phrase

an odd pronoun choice becomes apparent:

He gave it to Janey. He gave it to I.

The first part works, but "He gave it to I" isn't idiomatic English.

After a preposition like to we expect the accusative pronoun me,

rather thanthe nominative pronoun I:

"He gave it to me."

The same is true after other prepositions as well:

They were with me.

It isn't for me.

It's not about me.

When we rewrite these with compound phrases

we get the following:

He gave it to Janey and me.

They were with Janey and me.

It isn't for Janey and me.

It's not about me and Janey.

Note that there's nothing ungrammatical about putting me first,

as in the last example;

it's simply considered more polite to put oneself in the final position.

Thurber's second example is:

Louise and I gave it to he and she last Christmas.

"Louise and I" is fine, as we see if we separate the first compound phrase:

Louise gave it …; I gave it…

But if we separate the second compound phrase,

the pronouns become unidiomatic:

We gave it to he last Christmas. We gave it to she last Christmas.

It's the accusative—him and her in this case—that's called for:

We gave it to him last Christmas. We gave it to her last Christmas.

The accusativeis also called for

when the pronoun is the object of the verb

—that is, when it receives the action of the verb,

such as her in "I saw her."

Again, things get complicated when the pronoun

is part of a compound phrase,

as in this reworked version of Thurber's second example:

We gave he and she the book last Christmas.

When we separate the compound phrase, a similar situation arises:

We gave he the book last Christmas. We gave she the book last Christmas.

"We gave he the book" and "we gave she the book" don't sound right;

the accusative once again comes to the rescue:

We gave him the book last Christmas. We gave her the book last Christmas.

We won't agree with Thurber that the accusative is dead

—phrases like "tell me" and "call him" and "show her" and "hear them" continue to be used with unfettered frequency

—but we do agree that compound phrases sometimes make people choose pronouns differently.

If you want to keep the Thurber crowd happy,

separate the compounds to see

which pronoun is the word you're looking for.

In speechit may not matter to your audience much of the time,

but in writing especially,

you'll be judged more favorably if you keep the accusative in its place.

But there's more, of course, to this discussion.

If pronoun use is proof of facility with the language,

why do so many competent users of English confuse them in compound phrases?

One common theoryis that

people choose I instead of me in cases like

"He gave it to Janey and I"

because they've been taught that me isn't correct

in cases like "It is me" and "My friend and me agree";

they assume, so the theory goes,

that there's something wrong with me,

especiallywhen joined to someone else by and,

and so, they use I instead.

It's a reasonable enough theory

—and maybe it holds true for some people

—but it doesn't explain the matter entirely

because our evidence of [someone] and I

in the object position goes back to the 16th century, about 150 years before anyone was instructing anyone else about these things.

Another theoryhas the added bonus of dealing also

with the likes of "Louise gave it to he and she."

It's from linguist Noam Chomsky, who,

in his 1986 book Barriers, proposes that

compound phraseslike you and I and he and she

are barriers to the assignment of grammatical case,

meaning that their elements don't get assigned case individually,

but that the phrase as a whole is what gets assigned case instead;

the individual words in the phrase can look like

they're in the object or subjectposition,

or are even reflexive,

i.e. myself, herself, or themselves.

Chomsky's idea remains a theory,

but it does do the job of explaining the phenomenon.

Dictionary of Problem Words in English

You

When speaking directly to a person or group of persons, say you.

If you wish to refer to a number of people in general

and to no one in particular, use pronouns like one or anyone

and general nouns such as people, persons, and citizens.

It may not be rude,

but it certainly is informalto say to no one specifically

“You can see the importance of good health”

and “When you become a Girl Scout, you learn much useful information.”

(This indefinite use of youoccurs more often in writing than in speaking because one’s reader, unlike one’s hearers, are rarely present.)

Also, try to use less frequentlythose tired conversation fillers

“You see what I mean?” and “You know what?”

Dictionary of Problem Words in English

You all

This is an informal expression

sometimes meaning only one person,

sometimes meaning “all of you.”

In the latter sense

you all is unobjectionable,

but since the phrase is not fully standard in every meaning,

perhaps all of you should forget it.

Common Errors In English Usage Dictionary

Your & you

“I appreciate your cleaning the toilet”

is more formalthan “I appreciate you cleaning the toilet.”

Common Errors In English Usage Dictionary

Your & you’re

“You’re” is always a contraction of “you are.”

If you’ve written “you’re,” try substituting“you are.”

If it doesn’t work, the word you want is “your.”

Your writing will improve if you’re careful about this.