Everything about Yinz totally explained
Yinz is a
second-person plural pronoun used mainly in southwest Pennsylvania, including
Pittsburgh, but it's also found throughout the Appalachians. (See:
Pittsburgh English.)
Yinz is the most recent derivation from the original Scots-Irish form
you ones, which is probably the result of a contact situation between Irish and English. When standard-English speakers talk in the first person or third person, they use different pronouns to distinguish between singular and plural. In the first person, for example, speakers use the singular
I and the plural
we. But when speaking in the second person,
you performs double duty as both the singular form and the plural form. Crozier (1984) suggests that during the 19th century, when many Irish speakers switched to speaking English, they filled this gap with
you ones, primarily because Irish has a singular second-person pronoun,
tu, as well as a plural form,
sibh. The following therefore is the most likely path from
you ones to
yinz:
you ones [yuwʌnz] >
you'uns [yuʌnz] >
youns [yunz] >
yunz [yʌnz] >
yinz [yɪnz]. Because there are still speakers who use each form, there's no stable second-person plural pronoun form in southwest or central Pennsylvania—which is why this pronoun is variably referred to or spelled as
you'uns,
yunz,
yinz,
yins or
ynz.
In other parts of the U.S., Irish or Scots-Irish speakers encountered the same gap in the second-person plural. For this reason, these speakers are also responsible for coining the
yous found mainly in New Jersey and the ubiquitous
y'all of the South.
Yinz's place as one of Pittsburgh's most famous regionalisms makes it both a badge of pride and a way to show
self-deprecation. For example, a group of Pittsburgh area political cheerleaders call themselves "Yinz Cheer," and an area literary magazine is
The New Yinzer
, a take-off of
The New Yorker. Those perceived to be stereotypical
blue collar Pittsburghers are often referred to as
Yinzers.
Cited Source
- Crozier, A. (1984). The Scotch-Irish influence on American English. American Speech 59: 310-331.
Other Sources and External Links
Johnstone, B. and Danielson, A., "Pittsburghese" in the Daily Papers, 1910-1998: Historical Sources of Ideology about Variation, New Ways of Analyzing Variation Conference, October 2001.
Johnstone, B., Bhasin, N., and Wittkowski, D., "Dahntahn" Pittsburgh: Monophthongal /aw/ and representations of localness in Southwestern Pennsylvania. American Speech 77(20):146-166.
Pittsburgh Speech and Society A site for non-linguists, created by Carnegie Mellon University linguist Barbara Johnstone.
Pittsburghese.com (more humorous than scientific)
What Do You Call a Steeler Fan?
Are yinz from Pittsburgh?.
PBS Series, "Do You Speak American?"Further Information
Get more info on 'Yinz'.
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