y'all

frame|right|The Florence Y'all Water Tower in [[Florence, Kentucky; the words were painted in 1974.]] '''''Y'all''' (pronounced ) is a contraction of you and all, sometimes combined as you-all. Y'all is the main second-person plural pronoun in Southern American English, with which it is most frequently associated, though it also appears in some other English varieties, including African-American English, South African Indian English and Sri Lankan English. It is usually used as a plural second-person pronoun, but whether it is exclusively plural is a perennial subject of discussion.

==History== Y'all is a contraction of you all. The spelling you-all in second-person plural pronoun usage was first recorded in 1824. The earliest two attestations with the actual spelling y'all are from 1856, and in the Southern Literary Messenger (published in Richmond, Virginia) in 1858. Although it appeared in print sporadically in the second half of the nineteenth century in the Southern United States, its usage did not accelerate as a whole Southern regional phenomenon until the twentieth century.