Q: As a native New Yorker of Italian-American descent, I have always been plagued by the term “yous.” I stopped using it many years ago during my freshman year at college when a dorm mate from Beacon Hill grabbed me by both shoulders and shook me vigorously while proclaiming, “Yous is not a word God-dammit!”
I’ve accepted this but, in the interest of regaining some dignity, I do have a theory about its origins. New York is a city of immigrants who, like my grandparents, may have learned the English language but may have also retained some of the grammar of the home country. In English we express the plural of “you” with “you two” or “you three” or, in Katie Couric’s case, “you all.” But in Latin languages it is expressed with one word that, literally translated would be “yous” (for example: “vous” in French or “vosotros” in Spanish).
I therefore think that yous is almost a kind of creole for Italian-Americans rather than a sign that we have a strong aptitude for being a loan shark. Does this theory make sense or is my wife correct when she tells me I have much too much time on my hands?
A: You may have too much time on your hands, but there are worse things to do with it than worry about the language! At least (presumably) this preoccupation keeps you off the streets.
As you say, modern English, unlike some other languages, has only one form of “you” for both singular and plural. It’s been suggested by some linguists that “you-all,” “you-uns” (a Pittsburgh expression) and “yous” or “youse” actually originated as attempts to differentiate singular “you” from plural “you.” I can see that this might be a natural response on the part of immigrants (and not just Italians) whose first languages had both singular and plural forms.
Another listener e-mailed me about the same thing. She says that “the use of the word youse as a plural of you is almost universal amongst the people of Derry. They also use the word youse-uns, as an emphatic form, with remarkable frequency.” She suggests that there is indeed a connection with the use of “yous” in this country and Irish immigration patterns.