Posted by fd343ny on 3/31/2019 4:09:00 PM (view original):
Most of my friends spell it "y'all" - what are peoples' views on whether it is "y'all" or "ya'll"?
Neither iteration is proper grammar, for whatever that’s worth to you. You can make a better case (IMO) that it should be “y’all”, because it contracts “you all”, not “ya all”. But “all” isn’t part of a contraction for any other direct object (“they all” isn’t contracted to th’all, “we all” isn’t contracted to w’all, for instance), so it really isn’t considered to be standard English, at least among the linguists I used to work with.