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by neither_color 1374 days ago
I love ya'll because second person plural is something that English annoying lacks.

I'm also a fan of habitual be because it's something that can be expressed in English, but it sounds verbose or relies on context whereas "I be" is self explanatory without any context -you know that the speakers means "I regularly do/feel ___ "

My favorite phrase puts them together: "ya'll be trippin" is IMO the most efficient way in the English language to tell a group of people that their behavior is unacceptable.

2 comments

On the one hand "yous" fills this void in a way that is more consistent with the rules of pluralizing words, but on the other hand it also introduces a homophone with "use" which could hypothetically lead to confusion. So which is worse, inconsistency (y'all) or ambiguity (yous)?

Ultimately, since "yous" never fits in the same grammatical slot as "use" (different part of speech), there's never any real chance at confusion anyway. Therefore I weigh in on the side of "yous".

Once again New York has it right and the rest of yous be trippin.

I can see an immediate use for "y'all be trippin'" in the next presidential address on the topic of the January 6th insurrection.