#although i did double-take a lot when my northern college friends were fumbling through using y'all

[official-linguistics-post]

would “y’all” be considered a second person plural pronoun? Or at least functioning as one…? Kind of unclear because in the US north y’all is generally used to refer to a group, while in the south “y’all” can be one person and “all y’all” is the group

i absolutely treat it as one (being from the southern US myself). and i have to say it's been weird as hell watching "y'all" be adopted beyond its original varieties in the last 15 years or so. i get it—it's useful when english hasn't had a standardized second person plural for centuries—but yankees had their own versions!! what happened to youse!!

re: y'all vs. all y'all, there's no wide consensus on how they're applied numerically. i never use "y'all" for a singular person and "all y'all" is more of an emphatic variation for me.