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I am currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In chapter 6 there is a sentence by Dill. Before leaving, he says

'Yawl write, hear?

What does this sentence mean? Does it mean that they should write letters to each other?

you all should write, hear me?

Or does it mean something else?

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Akash Jain
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5 Answers5

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You've got it right.

As you've recognized, this is dialect.

Yawl - this is a less common way of spelling the dialectical y'all, which is used as the second person plural.

Hear - this is a shortened form of the expression you hear, which is used in the same dialect as a rhetorical way of asking for confirmation or assent.

In more standard (but still informal) American English, the same sentence could be phrased: "You guys make sure to write to me, ok?"

Juhasz
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    Would it be fair to say that even "you hear" is a contraction of "did you hear me?"? – llama Aug 19 '21 at 14:02
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    Note: depending on location, context, and speaker, "y'all" can also be first-person singular. Sometimes one even hears "all y'all' when the speaker wants to emphasize plurality. – John Bollinger Aug 19 '21 at 14:47
  • @llama That's probably where it came from. – Barmar Aug 19 '21 at 15:53
  • Interesting, I read this book as a child and don't remember any of the characters speaking in dialect like this. – Tom Aug 19 '21 at 22:12
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    @Tom, maybe you're just remembering Gregory Peck who was always very well-spoken. The book's got a fair amount of this kind of speech. The very first bit of dialog includes things like, "You got anything needs readin’ I can do it...." and "Scout yonder’s been readin’ ever since she was born, and she ain’t even started to school yet. You look right puny for goin’ on seven." – Juhasz Aug 19 '21 at 22:20
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    @llama, contraction usually only means dropping letters or sounds from words. Probably the more appropriate term would be conversational deletion. But I'd argue that, while "ya hear" probably originated from some variation of "do you hear me," its meaning has shifted away, such that you often cannot replace one phrase with the other. I.e. "Y'all write, do you hear me?" would sound quite strange. – Juhasz Aug 19 '21 at 22:25
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    @llama as a Southerner, I guarantee that's what it means. – RonJohn Aug 20 '21 at 13:44
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    @llama: `you hear" is short for "did/do you hear me?", but it's not actually a question, as Juhasz says. I've heard it used enough (on TV, etc., not by people I know in real life) to be pretty sure the actual meaning is more like "make sure you heard / understood the previous". It's like an emphasis that the preceding is true, proclaiming the wisdom / truth of what was just said before it. – Peter Cordes Aug 20 '21 at 21:16
  • @PeterCordes: In other words, it's a phatic expression. – Kevin Aug 21 '21 at 05:08
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To expand very slightly on Juhasz's correct answer (because I don't have enough rep yet to comment):

  • "Yawl" - more colloquial way to spell "y'all", meaning "you all" (which is, in the majority of cases, the second-person plural, although as John Bollinger points out in the comments to Juhasz's answer, it can be second-person singular)
  • "write" - in this context ("Yawl write"), the understood phrasing implies "write" means "should write to me/us" (depending on context)
  • "hear?" - contracted form of "you hear?", itself contracted from "do you hear me?"

Thus I would consider the fully expanded phrase to be something along the lines of "You (all) should write to me, do you hear me?"

gmleuty
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    I've never seen "y'all" written as "yawl", and have to wonder if OP is reading a translation. (But then I just looked at the Internet Archive full text of the book, and there it is, three times; apparently I missed it when skimming through the book instead of reading it. Yet another reason to dislike the book.) – RonJohn Aug 20 '21 at 06:30
  • Where I grew up, "y'all" rhymed with "hall" for the most part, but in the deeper South, I can imagine it comes out more like "yawl." – gmleuty Aug 20 '21 at 13:26
  • Rhymed as is having the "h" sound too? (I live in the Deep South, and "y'all" is a homophone of "yawl", and rhymes with ball, call, doll, fall, gall, hall, mall, pall, stall, tall, wall, and yawl.) – RonJohn Aug 20 '21 at 13:43
  • A fair point. I'm not a linguist, so I don't have the precision of terminology to describe it, but the difference (at least to me) seems to be in the sound of the vowel in "y'all" having (or not having) movement, i.e., where I grew up, "y'all" had a pretty flat sound similar to ⟨ɑ⟩, whereas I imagine a more Southern pronunciation seems to change slightly as the vowel is pronounced, closer to a diphthong. And as you say, that same feature is present in a number of words ending with -ll. As I said, though, I'm not a linguist, so I hope you can understand what I'm trying (and failing) to say. – gmleuty Aug 20 '21 at 14:05
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    I'm not a linguist either... :D Personally, i usually say "you all", since "y'all" has become such a cliche misused and misspelled by Yankees. Using "y'all" in the singular really irritates me, while it and writing "ya'll" both hurt my grammatical sensibilities...) – RonJohn Aug 20 '21 at 14:47
  • @RonJohn This is known as "eye dialect": choosing a spelling that closely reflects the sounds of spoken language, rather than one that's based on the conventional written form of the words. Harper Lee was trying to conjure an image in the reader's head of how the character speaks, to help those of us not from that part of the world immerse ourselves in the story. If she'd written "you all", it would not have been as effective, because that's not actually how the character would speak. – IMSoP Aug 21 '21 at 13:18
  • @IMSoP Daniel Webster would be proud... :D I just can't imagine "y'all" being pronounced any other way than "yawl", so the supposed need to write it like that baffles me. – RonJohn Aug 21 '21 at 13:23
  • @RonJohn I presume you mean Noah Webster, but I think you're also missing the point: eye dialect isn't about reforming spelling, it's an artistic technique to represent sounds on paper. As far as "y'all" being obvious enough, you're coming from the position of knowing the word - as am I, having seen enough American TV to have heard it spoken. However, someone who had never heard it might think "y'all" was still two syllables, just with a short schwa sound, sort of like "yuh-all"; spelling it "yawl" emphasises that the speaker leaves no pause at all. – IMSoP Aug 21 '21 at 13:32
  • @IMSoP Daniel... Noah... close enough for government work! And yes, it's a lack of imagination on my part. – RonJohn Aug 21 '21 at 13:44
  • Having lived in the deep south and married a southerner, I will also point out that y'all is commonly drawn out as though it's two indistinct syllables as are many monosyllabic words. In some parts of the north (Pennsylvania Dutch region for example), instead of ya'll there is "you-ens" vocalized like "yunz". – Steven the Easily Amused Aug 21 '21 at 20:07
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It is a representation of the 2nd person plural pronoun as commonly used in the Southern states of the USA. It is more commonly represented as "Y'all" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%27all).

mikado
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You find this phrase in other regions of the United States, including the Northern states. The Warner Brothers' cartoon character "Bugs Bunny" was fond of using this phrase, saying "Goodbye, now! Don't forget to write!"

https://www.barbneal.com/the-collection/looney-tunes/bugs-bunny/

(see .mp3 sound clip, about halfway down)

David Holland
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    Hi and welcome to Literature Stack Exchange. I think you have the beginning of a good answer. If you explained what "Yawl" means and the meaning of the phrase as a whole, that would significantly improve your answer. – Tsundoku Aug 19 '21 at 14:49
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This is imperative mood, followed by a request for confirmation of understanding.

Other answers say that "Yawl write" means "you should write", but I think that is subtly different.

bobble
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battey
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