Y'all
In the Southern United States dialects of American English, the term y'all, a contraction of you all, serves as the vernacular second-person plural pronoun. Because, in formal written English, the second-person pronoun you can be both singular and plural, many regional or national dialects have developed an informal distinction. This distinction is often made by adding a word to follow you in order to make a pronominal phrase for the plural. In British English, for example, the function is served by the phrase you lot. In many U.S. dialects, we find you guys (or, quite often, yous(e) guys). Likewise, in the Deep South, the appropriate term is y'all. However, in some areas of the South, including Texas, they are quite proud of this usage and many educated people there consider its usage viable for semi-formal communications, preserving their own distinctive dialect. It can also be quite useful when talking with, or translating for, people less familiar with the English language.
Y'all in context
A case can be made that y'all may have a singular reading as well. For many speakers of y'all-using dialects, the pronoun may certainly be used in the context of a single person, provided that the addressee is implicitly taken to be part of a larger group. So, for example, a person in a restaurant may ask a waiter "What kind of drinks do y'all have?", but if the question is asking about the waiter's drinks distinct from those of the restaurant, this usage would be ungrammatical. In this respect, this use of y'all is no more unexpected than the use of an exclusive we when only two individuals are actually physically present.
Spread
The disappearance of the Anglo-Saxon "thou" and related forms ("thee" and "thine") has influenced the seeming need to accept "y'all" into more and more contexts. The archaic form of informal English address, "thou," is only singular and has been replaced by "you," which was originally plural and occasionally singular in formal settings (i.e., when addressing a superior). "You," in gaining a specific singular meaning to replace "thou," lost it's plural denotation and a chasm appeared in ordinary English usage. Thus, popular slang versions of the second-person plural, such as y'all, are essentially accreting the former meaning of "you." The convergence of sociology and linguistics over the "thou/you/y'all" evolution is an important faultline between the shifting concerns and tensions of the English language. It suggests a rift between the English speaker's need for a distinctive plural pronoun for second-person and the conservative, prescriptivist tendencies of grammarians and teachers who generally discourage the use of parochial and slang lexical items.
Partly due to the rising popularity of rap music from the 1980s on, the use of the word "y'all" in the United States has spread from its original regionalism. The substitution of plural "you" to "y'all" can be heard in every city in the US, but it is also used increasingly among non-Southern American English speakers of all races and ethnicities, as well (particularly those who believe "you guys" to be inappropriate or sexist in connotation when addressing a group of women, for example). The syllable has proved useful in keeping metric cadences (as opposed to either "you guys" or "you lot"), yet the single syllable can be stretched-out, allowing the open vowel "aw" to create a much longer-sounding word.
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