I had the reverse experience from the one Bill Spruill quoted: As a native Southerner, I was amused (but not very surprised) to notice that my students in Michigan have their own plural version as well - "you guys." It's used for both men and women (so the "guys" part doesn't have its usual masculine connotation) and, as kind of a clencher for the argument that it's acting as a unitary pronoun, the possessive in informal speech is "you guys's" (the last word sounds exactly like "guises"). As a freshly transplanted Northerner in Wilmington, North Carolina, thirty years ago, I was invited by my chair to play tennis. Some confusion arose about which tennis balls on the court belonged to whom, and when the student on the adjacent court asked me, "Y'all got all y'all's balls?" I knew I wasn't in Iowa any more. Dick Veit ________________________________ Richard Veit Department of English University of North Carolina Wilmington To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/