You’uns

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Angelina. I’m calling from Western Montana.

Hey, Angelina.

Hi, Angelina. Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Well, I was just curious. See, I grew up in Dallas. I spent a lot of time in northwest Arkansas.

And, you know, growing up, we all used y’all. I’ve heard you guys and that kind of thing.

But in Arkansas, I lived in a little town of population 99 in the mountains, and I made friends with my neighbors there.

And most of them were older people that have been there their whole lives.

And I would hear them say, you know, the people in your family, the people in your house, or if you have a close group of friends and that kind of thing.

And it was just so cute.

And I was just wanting to know if you knew anything about that.

Yeah, Angelina, we can talk a little bit about it.

You know, where in Arkansas were you?

You wouldn’t happen to be in the northeast part of Arkansas?

Northwest.

Northwest.

Because I have family in southeast and southwest Missouri that also say U-ans.

And I agree with exactly what you said.

That part of Missouri shares a lot of language features with northern Arkansas.

They mean you and yours, you and your kin.

Or when I’m talking to you, I mean the you plural.

And all the people you think of that belong to you.

Or that you consider yourself, you know, of the same group.

And you can trace this back to some dialect features in the British Isles.

And then it came over and you find it really, really heavily used in western Pennsylvania.

But it also shows up in Ohio, the Ohio River Valley, Kentucky, North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri.

The speckles here and there throughout the south.

And it’s kind of like this interesting arc that even after it leaves the Ohio River Valley,

You can kind of draw a line kind of towards the southwest United States through Texas and more or less the places that have tended to say this follow this line, which may reflect the old immigration patterns when people were coming west.

It goes back to at least the early 1800s in the United States.

And it’s directly related to all of our Pennsylvania listeners are going to love this.

It’s directly related to the yins.

They tend to spell it in Pennsylvania as Y-I-N-S, yins.

But it’s the same thing, just a slightly different pronunciation and a different spelling.

Oh, I wouldn’t even probably know what they were saying if they said it that way.

Even through context?

Even if they say, yinz want to come over for some pie?

Yeah, through the context, I would.

Yeah, and a variant, not a variant, but like a matching word to keep in mind is weinz.

And it’s far less common, but it had been for a while that people would say weinz is going to the store now,

Meaning it’s the same kind of use of that pronoun with the uns attached to it, meaning ones.

Well, that’s really interesting. Thank you.

Yeah, our pleasure.

I just thought it was a really adorable word to feel like it’s with you.

I love that response that you have to something new in the language.

I love it when somebody says, it’s adorable, I love it, I need to find out more,

Because that is what Martha and I try to do as well.

So, cool for you.

Nice. Well, I love it.

Thanks, Angelina.

Thanks, Angelina.

Cool for you. I appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Well, call Grant and me to share your language stories, 877-929-9673,

Or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.