[untothebreach]

My wife talks this way all the time, and when we were first dating it really bothered me. Eventually I came across an explanation of the regional-ness of it on the internet somewhere, and I asked her if any of her family is from the Pittsburgh area. As far as she knows, they aren't, but they are from Columbus, OH, which is just down the highway a bit.

I heard that Pittsburgh-ians also tend to use "yinz" for the second-person plural, which I find much better than a plain "you," and much, much better than "You all" or "y'all". (Though I'm now told it is not as commonly used as I assumed it was)

Anyway, I love reading about the various ways american english has diverged, given time and distance.

[eximius]

It's "y'all", a contraction of "you all", not "ya'll". Which makes infinitely more sense than "yinz" which is apparently derived from "you ones" or something like that?

I also find that 'dropping of to be' sounds completely unnatural to me. It sounds like something I'd expect a non-native speaker to say.

My personal favorite English change is the cot-caught merger.

Of course, all of my preferences make sense because I grew up internationally or in the south - I wasn't caught up in the cot-caught merger and I picked up y'all because there has to be SOME second person plural!

[yellowapple]

> I picked up y'all because there has to be SOME second person plural!

Same here. Way more elegant solution than "you guys", and less jarring to most people than, say, "youse". The only better solution would be to bring back "thou" for the singular and make "you" plural, but alas, that's unlikely to happen (and I'd be the one using "thou" and "y'all" anyway).

Of course, there are the folks who treat "y'all" as a singular second person pronoun and use "all y'all" for the plural; I've worked with quite a few of those folks.

[untothebreach]

Thanks for pointing out my "y'all" typo -- fixed. I just don't like the way "y'all" rolls off the tongue, and never enjoyed using it. But, as you say, there has to be SOME second person plural. I just like the way "yinz" sounds, I guess. /shrug

[exception_e]

Another one is "yunz". People don't really use "yinz" and "yunz" too often though :(

[untothebreach]

Really? That's disappointing. I'm going to edit my post a bit bc apparently I've been misled :-/

[moron4hire]

My home town takes a lot of its accent from Baltimore, though it's still over two hours away. I never got used to saying "you'ns". There is a definite glottal stop in the middle. Annoying.

[brandonmenc]

"Yinz" is equivalent to "yous" - which is supposedly a Philadelphia thing - but everyone up in Erie prefers it to "yinz."

"Yinz" is very, very localized.

[jemfinch]

FWIW, I was raised in Cincinnati and spent almost a decade in Columbus, and "needs fooed" sounds perfectly normal to me, too.

[TheCondor]

Yinz is more flexible. Like it is used to address a singular person: "hey, yinz" or a group: "what are yinz guys doing?"

It's much more of a novelty until you hear it a lot, and then you start to hate it. "Yinz guys" sounds particularly offensive to my ear for some reason

[choosername]

i like the. aussi's yous