a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  644 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 22, 2022

Growing up, "y'all" as plural was evidence of proper West Plains heritage, while "all y'all" was scornful silliness. I can picture my grandmother scrunching her face and pretending to spit as she discusses it.

She also had no patience for the East Texas tendency to repeat everything three times for emphasis. "Male strip show, dance show, male strippers" is very East Texas.

Anything worth saying is worth saying once, well, after much deliberation. But then, these are linguistic patterns that diffused westward, not eastward. I think West Texas dialect diffused through New Mexico and Colorado, where it ran into conservative refugees and mormons. meanwhile Southern culture overran it from the east.

Dying breed, mine, and unmourned.





ThurberMingus  ·  643 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Nobody in my direct ancestry has stayed in place long enough for 'proper heritage' of any sort, and any 'West Plains heritage' was copied after WWII. The Native Texan half of the family mostly spoke German until the 1940s and half of them weren't even in Texas until the dust bowl.

The culture of my family is mythologized stories about great grand parents glued together with the local stuff wherever they ended up.

Even in the branch of the family with the most claim of heritage (Virginian, 'real English') my great grandmother ran away to Montreal for a decade to marry a Catholic and have my granddad.

kleinbl00  ·  643 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The "y'all line" of my family moved from Texas to New Mexico in 1940, Alabama to Texas in 1856, Tennessee to Alabama in 1800, the Virginia Colony to the State of Franklin (now Tennessee) in 1787, what became Tennessee from what became Kentucky in 1733, and built this in Virginia in 1758.

Prior to that the 'Y'all line" had been in the Virginia Colony since 1650. According to Wikipedia the name was first recorded during the reign of Edward Longshanks.