Where the heck did “Y’all” really come from?

OK! The southern slang word “Y’all”, as made into common vernacular by John Wayne in those old cowboy movies, and now used all over the South United States, seems to me to be missing a coherent historical origin.

I’ve googled this dumb word and found a bunch of silly explanations from Scottish origins, to Slave Originated Slang, to Creole/Pidgin/French

None of these makes any sense to me. None of these explain the specific geographical origin of the slang in the U.S. Nor do I think that Texas folk were largely made up of Scottish settlers bring the Ulster Scots language over from the “Old Country”.

Here’s what I think.

If you take a good listen to the ramblings of the aforementioned “Duke” in many of his movies, which were set in the Southwestern United States, in what was originally part of Mexico. We hear The Duke utter many Spanish derived words. “Hombre”, “Amigo”, “Seniorita”, just to name a few. This is easily explained by the mix of English and Spanish speakers in the old SouthWest along with native speakers of both languages mixing and mashing the two languages together into the same sentences.

Now anyone who has taken first year high school Spanish knows that the common verb conjugation includes, Yo; Tu; El, Ella, Usted; Nosotros, Nosotras; Ellos, Ellas, Ustedes. Or in English: I; You; He/She/You; We; They & finally “YOU ALL”

I simply offer unto you my firm belief that “Y’all” as a contraction was derived from SouthWest regional English speakers borrowing and translating “Ustedes” into English in the most useful form of a plural 2nd party pronoun, condensing the result from two words “YOU ALL” into a single more useful word “Y’all”.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.