re: "Y'all" is becoming more common these days

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Like if we stick with the food world for example, it's now less about having to wear a coat and more about the quality and execution of the dish.

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hated fine dining.

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do black people generally use "yall" no matter where they are born?

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In contemporary New York City, it is common to hear local teenagers use the word “y’all.” A few decades ago, this word would have been confined to speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), who brought the word with them from the American South. Yet nowadays, with the spread of AAVE, the word has been adopted by young New Yorkers of every ethnicity under the sun.

But where did this strange little word come from? The answer reveals a remarkable (and unlikely) story of language dispersion.

If you’re a little confused about what “y’all” means, you’re not alone. Even people who get the basic jist of “y’all” don’t grasp its grammatical purpose. The word is a “second person plural,” meaning it is a plural version of “you.” So, for example, in the American South (where “y’all” is most widespread) somebody would say:

“You want to go to the store?” if they were talking to a single person. Or,
“Y’all want to go to the store?” if they were talking to a group of people.

How “y’all” got to New York City is quite obvious: at several points in the Twentieth Century, African Americans moved to northern cities like New York for industrial jobs, and brought this dialect word with them from the South. No big mystery there.

But where did “y’all” come from in the first place? A fews years back, historian David Parker explored this question on his blog. For an answer he looked to linguist Michael Montgomery:

…Montgomery claims that “y’all” goes back to the Scots-Irish phrase “ye aw,” and he offers as evidence a letter written in 1737 by an Irish immigrant in New York to a friend back home: “Now I beg of ye aw to come over here.” As I understand Montgomery’s hypothesis, “ye aw” was Americanized into “y’all,” which is indeed a contraction of “you all” but would not have come into being without the influence of the Scots-Irish phrase.

I see little reason for doubting Montgomery’s hypothesis. ...

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Well since you guys is sexist, I guess y'all has been right all along.

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