Ya’ll – “you will” – [pronounced “yuhl”]
example: “We’ll get there around 9, ya’ll meet us there.”

I’ve lived in Texas my whole life- between College Station and Austin. All’a my teachers tried to instill that this is the way that things are supposed to be done. The Texas state fair sign simply implies that you WILL go back— it’s a statement through question and shows the typical Texas Ego.

I’m always shocked when I hear somebody say “All’a y’all,” … All of you all? Okay.

But this is a tender subject for Texans– we’re very hardheaded and don’t like hearing that we’re wrong. Everywhere else [in the south] that I’ve seen it in public, it’s y’all. Maybe it has something to do with our rebellious nature.

If you want to separate the Texas from the rest of the southern US, you could label states like Georgia, Florida and Alabama the Deep South and just call us Texas.

And I believe an apostrophe can replace two letters in a contraction, such as in ‘She’ll’, ‘He’ll’, and ‘We’ll’ (In all of these, the apostrophe replaces both the ‘w’ and the ‘i’ in ‘will’)

I’m no english teacher, but I try to pay attention in class. :) Personally, I believe it is spelled y’all. ‘Ya’ll’ cuts the term in half, and personally, when I read it out loud, it sounds weird. And once again, the grammar I learned when I was seven comes back and ‘y’all’ meets the rules of grammar where ‘ya’ll’ does not.

Well, there’s my two cents. :)

Well, there are my two cents.

What it boils down to (I am a Texan, proudly as well) is, proper “ain’t” got a thing to do with it. :D It’s a southener word, made by southeners. Who’s going to tell who how to spell it. When you make up a word, who’s to say what is proper. The english didn’t produce it, the yankees (no offense) didn’t produce it, we did. In agreement as to what would be a proper contraction would be a good argument, unless you revert back to what I originally said. We made it, we spell it, that’s proper spelling.
As a side note, my brother (Texan also) and I have disagreed for yrs on proper spelling, but I have to remind him he lived up north for a long time, and he’s forgiven. :P

With nods to many, I’ll throw my lot in with Brady and Autumne, who I think was most eloquent, and decidedly more brief than I will be capable of being, to her credit. My thoughts on the subject tended toward exactly her argument before I even made it that far down the board.

For the record, I am most currently a Portlander, in Oregon (pronounced “OR-i-gun”, incidentally, for you Northeasterners and Midwesterner who might think otherwise)…To the point, however, I am a native Floridian, and one who was taught in a Catholic primary school. As such, I possess a fairly unique combination of Southern gentility and grammatical correctness. Further, I am also by training an engineer, and therefore one who despises errors and embraces logic and rules.

If you’ve not yet gone back to see what Brady and Autumne had to submit, you’re likely mistaken at this point in what you think my take is…So, read up, ya’ll!

Whether by understanding or saying so directly, several entries above have implied one thing on which we can probably all agree: that language (and spelling) evolves and changes, and that this change occurs, both in the written and spoken forms, through the vernacular.

Now the word “ain’t” is one similar in many ways to the one being discussed. Most notably, it is a contraction (of “am not,” according to dictionary.com) which is certainly a word, albeit one not commonly accepted as “proper” for formal use. Still, in this case we all know how to spell the word, despite it being resistant to our “rules” for contractions. Another, “shan’t,” is referenced twice in posts above. Short for “shall not,” I still remember the morning almost thirty years back when Sister Anne, the pricipal, came into the second-grade classroom and stumped us with this one.

One of the “rules” we’d been taught was that the apostrophe indeed was there to note the (one) absent letter.* As noted by others above, many words do not follow this rule, but if we attempt to follow it in contracting to either “y’all” or “ya’ll,” then it is Autumne’s argument alone that fits the rule.

My point is that following the rules only gets one so far, and in many cases will leave one with an incorrect answer. I submit, humbly, that the vernacular, in cases such as this one being discussed, is the best guide, and I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that, where I grew up, the common, agreed upon spelling of the form was “ya’ll,” rules be damned.

I would not presume to correct anyone else from a different area (where the word was also used) on the matter, for some seem to support the alternate spelling, and with good argument. I would, however, warn those who think the answer is obvious, and flatly label their objectors as wrong, that their overconfidence is self-limiting. Especially careful, I think, should be those Northern souls who never spoke the word in common language.

Thanks to Alex for keeping this thread alive (it’s 12/08 right now), even if we might not see eye to eye.

*interesting footnote from dictionary.com on the very word in question: “y”all …1909, U.S. dial. abbreviation of you all (see you)”…note the two apostrophes denoting the TWO contracted letter. Also note that the hundred-year-old origin given for a word does not detract from my belief that the evolved vernacular is the strongest factor in deciding what is correct (i.e. for better or worse, common usage becomes correct usage, even if it is not or was not as some previous time).

** From the same source (methinks) that Alex quoted the regional note (dictionary.com) the conclusion edited out is interesting, especially (perhaps) for those dear Yankee readers here intrigued: “In addition to y’all, other forms for plural you include you-uns, youse, and you guys or youse guys. Youse is common in vernacular varieties in the Northeast, particularly in large cities such as New York and Boston, and is also common in Irish English. You-uns is found in western Pennsylvania and in the Appalachians and probably reflects the Scotch-Irish roots of many European settlers to these regions. You guys and youse guys appear to be newer innovations than the other dialectal forms of plural you. See Note at you-uns.” My father, who grew up in Pittsburgh, occasionally spoke “you-uns”, although I’m sure I’ve seen it spelled “you’ns”; likewise, “youse guys” was spelled “yous guys” just in this very thread. Perhaps yous guys could have yerselves a similar discussion??

I have yet to hear a fellow Texan or any Southerners use the longer version implied by some commenters of “ya all”. We may say “catch ya later” or “see ya”, but the vast majority of the time that’s a reference to a single individual, not a group.

I stick by my original post – it’s y’all.