this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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If anyone can find more pixels for me i would appreciate it.

Thanks y'all.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

"y'all" fills a legitimately useful gap the English language has. Other languages have a word like this.

Edit: also something cool I just found out, some languages have a way to disinguish "we" (you and I), and "we" (me and the rest of us, not you). It's called clusivity and is missing from European languages. Many indigenous languages of the Americas and Oceania have this, as well as Vietnamese and northern dialects of Mandarin.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

There is also “you lot”

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Not a gap in every dialect! "Ye" is another plural second person used in Ireland

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

And youse in Dublin.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

Hear y'all hear y'all, Reggie King from o'er the holler brought pawpaw moonshine for the weddin'

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

The worst is when a language formally has a disambiguating word but then speakers all just decide to not use it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Any examples of an equivalent in other languages?

I speak a small amount of French but can't think of one

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

"Vous" is the first one that comes to mind in french. But since it is also a more formal (and/or "respectful") version of "tu/toi", it can both designate a group of people or a single person, depending on the context (just like "you" in English). Sometimes people will use "vous tous" (literally "you all") to make this clear.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

In Portuguese (especially Brazilian), there are singular and plural forms of "you": "você" (singular) and "vocês" (plural). In English, "you" behaves like a plural because it's followed by "are" instead of "is". The only exception I can see is "yourself" and "yourselves" that refer to both singular and plural forms.

However, In Portuguese, even though we have "vocês" as plural form, we also use "vocês todos" or "todos vocês" ("you all"/"all of you") sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Spanish has "Ustedes" (except in Spain, they use "Vosotros/Vosotras")