and to those that dont speak Southern English, it is. Just like those that dont speak American English think the lack of vowels in words and dropping random consonants in speech is “language abuse”.
shrug let people talk the way they want to talk.
If you think thats an odd distinction, go learn japanese, where they dont have plural at all 
(its all contextual)
No, “you” is singular and plural in English. The plural used to be “ye”, but no longer. 
There was also thou / ye … but also you / ye.
Two distinctions of the English language are its continuously evolving nature and its ability/openness to absorbing influences from other cultures. Regional variations, both national and international, are a natural and healthy result of those factors.
I’m a Brit living in California, and very comfortable switching between British and American forms. Getting upset over which is more “correct” is equally for the birds and a load of old cobblers’.
I grew up in London with Polish parents, and am fluent in that language. My parents, on the other hand, were confused learning English as a second language, For example, why don’t English nouns have genders? Polish nouns are each of masculine, feminine, or neutral gender. Adjectives take different endings based on the gender of the noun they’re qualifying. Similarly for verbs acting on those nouns. Verbs also take different endings based on the plurality of the subject noun.
So, in the following sentence variants: He/She/They(masc.)/They(fem.) bought a red book/pencil,
the words bought and red would each have quite different forms and/or endings. Not so in English.
It happens with proper nouns too. Here in the US, my good friends Mr Malinowski and his wife Mrs Malinowska had one heck of a time persuading US Immigration that they were actually married, even though their last names were “different” (Sir/Ma’am, our computer systems don’t recognize you).
The other major problem my parents had (as do most Slavic peoples) is with the English definite and indefinite articles (i.e. “the” and “a”). Polish and other Slavic languages simply doesn’t have them - nothing equivalent. Often, even subjects or objects of verbs are dropped. Context is everything. In Polish, you get this kind of conversation: Q: Where are keys? A: On bookcase. Q: Not see. A: On second shelf. Q: Ah, are! See! English, however, requires “the” and “a” (and in this example Ah, there they are! and I see them!), and my parents had a hard time understanding when and when not to use them, and which one. They had no cultural reference to go by.
All languages have their quirks, Embrace them for what they are!
You won’t hear this in the UK that is for sure, unless you happen to be speaking to an American. A girl I bike with is from the Carolinas and occasionally drops it into conversations for effect.
I watch a lot of American renovation shows and it is often used in the southern state programmes, the presenters on Hometown for instance (from Mississippi).
Plenty of regional dialects across the world though. Always amazes me how many there are across the UK given how small a country we are.
Where I’m from the old chaps might still say ‘Ow bist ol’ butt’ or ‘Ow bist’ for short. Just means - how are you? although it’s getting less common to hear.
We use the word ‘Alright?’ as a greeting, which seems to confuse a lot of americans as it doesn’t actually require an answer other than a reciprical ‘Alright’.
Unfortunately much of the evolution is careless and does not help. Improvements should be made with consideration, not when someone feels like being different.
For good reason; gender is unnecessary. The current trend is to remove gender, not add gender.
Good luck with that. Getting more than two people to agree on something is nearly impossible, and who’s to say what’s an improvement and what’s not. Most changes come from common usage more than an effort to make an improvement to something. In fact, some changes are disturbing to older generations, which is what often causes grief between the generations. For me, an example is pleaded vs pled. In the past 10 years or so, pled (the past tense of plead) has shifted to pleaded. For a non-native English speaker, that almost makes sense but to someone who had “proper” grammar hammered into him at school, the word pleaded is like nails on a chalk board. Unfortunately for me, pleaded has won out and is used much more commonly nowadays that pled.
But back to the original question…I use y’all ALL…THE…TIME. A lot of is spending a bunch of my early life in the south and the midwest, and it’s a colloquialism I haven’t been able to break even though I haven’t lived below the Mason Dixon line since I was 8. It doesn’t break into my writing (I find myself using very little slang in my writing) but vocally, it’s a common part of my lexicon.
The US has so many regional dialects and accents, it’s ridiculous. Southerners sound different than Northerners who sound different than those from the North East/New Englanders who sound different than the Midwesterners and the West Coasters. Part of it is the different ethnicities which have made up the population of the country, part of it is weather (Research has theorized than a large part of the reason US Southerners speak slower because of the heat and humidity and it’s effect on brain patterns - wish I could find that study/report again).
In fact, the state I live in has three distinct dialects. The large populated area to the east has one dialect, the one to the east has another, and the middle and upper parts of the state which are more rural have another (though different parts of the middle have some variances). We have different words for the same thing (soda/pop/cola, sandwhich/sub/hoagie, etc) and it depends on where you live which one is used. Each of my granparents lived in different regions of this state, and sometimes I felt like I needed a dictionary/thesaurus…
See, and in my head, that was “I use y’all ALL…THE…TIME, y’all.” Though admittedly it was in a mississippi female inflection in my head.
And if I said it out loud, that’s probably how it would have come out. Some things just take root.
I’ve lived in my state since I was ten so I sound like a generic northerner. But about 15 years ago, my wife and I made a trip to Cherokee, NC. That place has a deep southern accent, and within a day, my southern accent came back with a vengeance. My wife thought I was making fun of them, but I didn’t even realize I was doing it. It took about two weeks for it to completely go away. Even now, if I’m talking with someone with a deep southern accent, I have to contentiously not revert to the accent, and I have weekly meetings with people from two deeply southern states, so it gets…interesting…if I don’t pay attention.
In TV shows and in national news shows people sound alike. There is very little variation.
That’s because they people doing news reports are trying to be employable. If they spoke with a heavy regional accent and used regional dialect, they’d have a much harder time being employable. Hence why they adopt a more “generic” U.S. accent.
As for TV shows, listen again. There are small regional dialects in each of them. Shows in Chicago will have a heavy influence of the Chicago accent and dialect. Same for something set in NYC or LA. Perhaps not the “main” characters, but the supporting ones for sure.
Add in the fact that actors are disproportionately not American has an influence. Granted, the ratio is skewed much higher in Movies than in TV where Australians and Europeans outnumber American actors, but a lot of the actors on TV are just as likely to be from Canada than from the US. The foreign actors will adopt the same “generic” US accent for the same reason as the news reporters.
Exactly. There is a common pronunciation. Even for TV shows such as Heartland that is made by Canadians and the actors are Canadian and the show is about Canadians in Canada, I must listen very carefully to hear them say aboot instead of about; otherwise they sound the same as people that are native Californians.
Interesting that it’s still like that in the USA. In the early days of the BBC everyone in broadcast spoke in very stuffy, proper, King’s/Queen’s English. More recently it has become more fashionable or inclusive to have presenters with regional or ethnic accents. Though of course they still have to be coherent, which in the wild many British accents are not so much.
And I’m not sure they all achieve that. Maybe it’s just my inner voices that are confusing matters as they strive to correct them. Some fairly high profile new presenters don’t seem to be able to speak properly, and I don’t just mean the old-style “received pronunciation” that used to be required on the BBC. And don’t get me started on continuity people who insist of trying to have a conversation instead of just telling me what’s on next.
“Received Pronunciation” (or RP), is what that’s called. It’s still required for national broadcasts, but the move towards regional broadcasting has made it more common to relax the RP requirements.
Don’t get me wrong, I have seen plenty of newscasts and such which have a heavy dose of regional accents - I just haven’t seen those regional accents outside their own region. If people want to move on up the proverbial pole and get promoted to places with more exposure, the regional dialects get left behind.
I don’t know if it’s an intentional view towards increased diversity or what, but I have seen an uptick of people who are ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers doing the news, and those “accents” come through pretty strong. Granted, they are much better than me because my attempts at any other language have been horrific, but the accent is noticeable and sometimes disruptive.
Even worse, imho, is that “plaintiff” has become “complainant”. I want to 
every time I hear that.
Hey, if youse are sick of “y’all”, youse oughta come down to Straya, where we say youse, and g’day, and maaaaate! We’ve always got a few roos loose in the top paddock, too.
So, yeah, gramma: ya is singular (like, “G’day, how are ya?”), and youse is plural (like, “where are youse goin?”)
So, yeah, nah … like, no confusion here. Hooroo!
I don’t know if it’s being native or non-native speaker but maybe more that people in general are reluctant to change what they’ve learned when they were young - or is it just me? I don’t know much about pleaded/pled but I generally don’t like changes in languages. For example, I’m not fond of the new British -ise suffix (instead of -ize) - probably because when I was young and learning English the old textbooks and dictionaries never used the -ise suffix and so I keep using -ize although I’m trying to use British English. Likewise, I’m reluctant to accept y’all, but now I know what it is. Personally, I’d rather see a revival of the old thou / thy / thine to get the singular / plural distinction. I think I just like the old ways…
We expect you to use those in your future posts here. 
Don’t forget ye, also.
In an episode of Hot Bench a judge said y’all at least twice. Hot Bench is a show with three real judges that decide litigation in a real small-claims court.