Slang contraction for the 2nd person plural pronoun, utilized amongst the indigenous populations of the southern
continental United States.
Origin: Often incorrectly attributed to the contraction of "you + all," the word actually originated from the
fusing of "ya + all." The kind of fella who would say ya'll for the first time would not be enunciating a clean and crisp "you" in his daily speech. "You" wasn't in his spoken vocabulary, but "ya" was. Now, try to say "ya all." It is actually not easy to do as two separate words. To say it with a normal cadence, it already almost sounds like ya'll, but with the slightest stutter. "Ya all" quite naturally slips into the familiar pronoun we all use. Ya + all = ya'll. When you look at it that way, the placement of
the apostrophe after the "a" makes sense. Alternately, you + all = y'all. However, the ya + all transition more naturally illustrates the origin of "ya'll." "You all" is
cumbersome, although that is usually how yall is explained to uninitiated Yankees, whose experience with "ya" is often limited. "You all" just doesn't lead the the inevitable ya'll that "Ya all" does. However, y'all is an accepted alternate spelling.
