Dialects have proper grammatical rules that they follow, even when they differ from "proper" English (or whatever), and as far as I know all dialects of Southern follow the plural y'all rule. Which doesn't mean that you might not get somebody who uses it, in the same way you might get somebody who speaks ungrammatically in any tongue, or that in an isolated area new rules may not evolve. It would be interesting to read something on how the usage you heard came about, if it were a regional thing, and how accepted it was.
The very rural and mostly lower class Cracker dialect I grew up with uses a soft R so the class distinction doesn't hold up. In contrast to the very soft A sound that you hear in the upper class accents it does have a more harsh and broad A that makes up for the R so it still sounds hick.
It is true, however, that the best known soft R Southern accent is that of upper-class, urban, Charleston and I can't think of any of the accents that insert extra Rs that are associated with the upper class.
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Date: 2008-03-15 05:21 pm (UTC)Dialects have proper grammatical rules that they follow, even when they differ from "proper" English (or whatever), and as far as I know all dialects of Southern follow the plural y'all rule. Which doesn't mean that you might not get somebody who uses it, in the same way you might get somebody who speaks ungrammatically in any tongue, or that in an isolated area new rules may not evolve. It would be interesting to read something on how the usage you heard came about, if it were a regional thing, and how accepted it was.
The very rural and mostly lower class Cracker dialect I grew up with uses a soft R so the class distinction doesn't hold up. In contrast to the very soft A sound that you hear in the upper class accents it does have a more harsh and broad A that makes up for the R so it still sounds hick.
It is true, however, that the best known soft R Southern accent is that of upper-class, urban, Charleston and I can't think of any of the accents that insert extra Rs that are associated with the upper class.