As I understand it, the term "yo" comes from "you." It was pretty common in the Bronx when I was a kid.
One of the problems in English is the lack of a distinctive plural for "you." We use the same word for both one and many people. For example: I gave flowers to you because you are my love. I gave flowers to you because you are the best football team in the world. To meet the need for discriminating between the two uses, words evolve. In the south the phrase "Y'all" which is a contraction of "you all" became popular as a distinctive plural of you. In the Northeast "youse" like "Youse guys are in trouble" became popular. This came about because most plurals in English are formed by adding an "s" so "you + s = youse." I gave flowers to youse because you are the best football team in the world. Another popular choice is "you guys" that might evolve into a single word in the future where "guys" is treated as gender neutral. I gave flowers to you guys because you won the beauty pageant. The lack of a gender neutral singular pronoun has been a topic of discussion for many years. There were a few attempts I remember in the sixties to come up with a word for "he or she" but none became popular. The idea the "yo" has become a gender-neutral pronoun was promulgated in a paper based on observation of kids in Baltimore. To me, most of the examples sounded more like the "traditional" use of "Yo" to mean "You" but I have not read the original -- only comments on it. The most common way to do this now is to use "they" as in: When the user looks at the screen they decide what action to take. Or "them" When someone wants a better interface you should give it to them. While grammar teachers may shudder, language evolves as a result of how people choose to use it not by what the grammarians dictate. Some linguists have proposed theories that can predict how the words in a language will change. Of course, another force in this is texting. If you haven't seen it, a fun site is "The English-to-12-Year-Old-AOLer Translator" located at http://ssshotaru.homestead.com/files/aolertranslator.html which translates standard English into "netLingo." Or, as the translator puts it: OF COURSE ANOTHAR FORC3 IN THES SI T3XTNG!!!1! WTF LOL IF U HAEVNT SEN IT A FUN SIET SI TH3 ENGLISH-2-12-YEAR-OLD-AOLAR TRANSLA2R LOCAETD AT http://ssshotaru.homestead.com/files/aolertranslator.html LOL WHICH TRANSLAETS STANDARD ENGLISH IN2 NATLNGO!1!!11 WTF LOL Anyway, time to get back to work. I hope youse have a gr8 day. TTYL. Charlie ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
