I guess I'm in a second-person pronoun kind of mood, because I'd like to clarify something about the contraction of "you all".

Eeyup. That contraction.

Contractions tend to follow fairly consistent rules. You take two words, smash them together until some arbitrary amount of them falls off, and then put an apostrophe between the two.

So "they have" turns into "they've", "I will" becomes "I'll", and so on. I will, however, readily admit to not having any clue what kind of dark sorcery turns "will not" into "won't".

The same applies to "y'all". The Y is taken from "You", and the "all" is, well, "all." So don't write it as "ya'll". You doesn't have any A's in it.

1483161 Haha, I remember wondering in school why "won't" was such a weird contraction. My guess is that it's a more simple pronunciation. If you try to pronounce "willn't" the "ill" part might have been simplified into an "o" sound. But that's just my best guess.

1483194

Plausible, but still doesn't explain why it's spelled like it is, but pronounced "wolnt." English is weird.

1483206 Yeah. It probably comes down to linguistics. I mean, when I found out that "ch" is actually just "tsh" and our "j" is just "dzh" (both written like tʃ and dʒ in the IPA, International Phonetic Alphabet, respectively) my mind was blown on how weird English really is.

1483253

1483161
Thank you. Thank you for not only posting this clarification where it can be seen by many people who need it, but also for doing so in a manner completely unlike what I would have chosen. If I had written this, there would probably be profanity and indiscriminate insults included with the advice.

This source says that "won't" was just another victim of shifting vowels, like so many other words in the English language.

1483282

This source says that "won't" was just another victim of shifting vowels, like so many other words in the English language.

Interesting.

1483289
It's a very brief explanation, if you want to go read it. I only included the link so I wouldn't sound like I was making it up myself.

1483296

I did read it.

1483304
Maybe this will help (if you're not already familiar with it)...

1483318

My linguistic history is very basic; thanks for sharing the link.

1483336
The history of the English language is an interest of mine, and you're very welcome.

1483161 Do people... Do people DO THAT?

I feel ill.

1483161 The contraction shan't is extremely strange to me for some reason. It's probably because nobody ever uses it modernly.

1485333

I imagine that's because people using "shall" are going for pretentiousness anyways, which is undermined by contractions.