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"How ya doin?" v. "How ya' doin'?" and so on.

There's... a debate.

Dave Newton
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    Certainly a matter of opinion, but I'd go with "How ya doin'?". – Hot Licks Jan 11 '16 at 21:55
  • @HotLicks Why for "doing" and not "you"? Trying to nail down if there are any particular rules/norms for apostrophe application. – Dave Newton Jan 11 '16 at 22:02
  • Just the way I usually see it, and the way it seems to me. "Ya" is not considered an abbreviation, I suppose. – Hot Licks Jan 11 '16 at 22:04
  • Feasibly some people might use ya' as a short form of y'all (i,e. - US "Deep South" speak for you all). But it's at the very least nonstandard. Come to that, ya itself isn't normally used either. It's a pointlessly distracting orthography that to my mind insults the intelligence of the reader (who's quite capable of inferring that you might be enunciated with a schwa instead of an 'oo' sound in many contexts). – FumbleFingers Jan 11 '16 at 22:07
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    @FumbleFingers, actually all over the Southern US, not just 'Deep South', we say y'all. The only time ya should be followed by an apostrophe is when it is part of the contraction of ya and will: ya'll. I see people mistype this all the time, ya'll when they meant to say y'all. Drives me nuts! ;) – Tim Ward Jan 11 '16 at 22:10
  • It's nonstandard language and so doesn't really have a standard way of spelling ("y'all" notwithstanding). It looks more natural without the "'" to me. For debate's purposes, what letters is the "'" replacing (if it is intended to show a contraction)? – Mitch Jan 11 '16 at 22:20
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    @Tim Ward: My scare quotes around "Deep South" were intended to acknowledge the fact that I'm sure there are plenty of Americans who would say they're from the "Southern US", but reject the designation "Deep South". As a Brit, I know little about such distinctions - to us, that latter term is mostly just a historical term relating to the time/place when/where supposedly civilised men kept other men as slaves. – FumbleFingers Jan 11 '16 at 22:28
  • Yes, @FumbleFingers, that was exactly my point. It isn't just an expression used by slavemasters in Mississippi. ;) – Tim Ward Jan 11 '16 at 22:34
  • @Tim Ward: I know, but even though those slavemasters are [hopefully] all long dead now, I just can't resist any opportunity to stamp on their corpses. Particularly since I've just watched The Hateful Eight, where Tarantino continues his long-established tradition of doing exactly the same. – FumbleFingers Jan 11 '16 at 22:37
  • (Even though unrelated, I would upvote your comment if I hadn't used all my upvotes for the day already, @FumbleFingers. I loved QT's Django Unchained! And I'm not a big Tarantino fan!) – Tim Ward Jan 11 '16 at 23:00
  • If you like the subject more than the director, check out Mandingo and Pinky. In some ways I find those even more "disturbing", because when they were being filmed there were still abominations like segregation (effectively, apartheid) in what was even then often thought of as the most "advanced" (certainly, most powerful) nation on earth. People are indeed strange. – FumbleFingers Jan 11 '16 at 23:08
  • If you're Joey on Friends, then you wouldn't because you make "you" flirtatiously rhyme with "do": "How you dooin'?" – Benjamin Harman Jan 12 '16 at 03:07
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    Not really an answer, but without the apostrophe, "doin" looks like it rhymes with "loin" or "groin". Something out of Lord of the Rings: "Boin, son of Doin, of the great house of Goin!" – MichaelS Jan 13 '16 at 09:14
  • An apostrophe is for a missing letter, and nothing is missing in "ya" - it's just "you" mispelled. I'd say that no apostrophe is needed. – HugMyster Jan 13 '16 at 10:57

4 Answers4

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I use an apostrophe to indicate the place where letters have been omitted.

What'll I do (' = wi/sha)

I'd say (' = woul/shoul/coul)

How ya doin' (' = g)

Ya is an alternative form of 'you' (- regional or colloq. = you pron.(OED))

Since there are no letters missing in 'ya' there is no apostrophe.

Dan
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  • Is this codified somewhere I could refer to? I know that's the "rule" for most contractions/etc, I'm just wondering if it's similar for other constructs. – Dave Newton Jan 12 '16 at 12:06
  • I thought ya was a contraction of ya'll, which was a contraction of you all. Hence, it should be ya'. But I might be mistaken. Your input is welcome. (Also, as a logician, I need to point out that you're wrong that you only use apostrophe to indicate letter omissions. I dare you to construct a possessive form without it. In a general case! My and of crown doesn't suffice...) – Konrad Viltersten Jan 12 '16 at 12:11
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    @KonradViltersten I have a suspicion (but no evidence) that the apostrophe in the possessive suffix is indicating an omission, just one we've long forgotten. My amateur theory is based on modern German having a possessive (genitive) suffix "es", so "des Wortes Endung" -> *"the wordës ending" -> "the word's ending"... – IMSoP Jan 12 '16 at 12:32
  • @IMSoP It makes sense (as in, I can't contradict it without using google). In such case, Dan'll be able to prove me wrong by switching back a few centuries and schootching to a different language, hehe. – Konrad Viltersten Jan 12 '16 at 12:45
  • @KonradViltersten - thanks for reining in my extreme language. I'm afraid I don't know if IMSoP is right or not about the possessive apostrophe, so I've edited (PS. I don't get your last sentence). – Dan Jan 12 '16 at 12:46
  • Oh, I was just being nerdy nit-pick. One can technically speaking construct a genitive form without the apostrophe: "it is my* house." and "defender of the Crown*", so I was just ass-covering my angles. – Konrad Viltersten Jan 12 '16 at 12:50
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    @IMSoP Wikipedia still remembers: "The spelling -es remained, but in many words the letter -e- no longer represented a sound. In those words, printers often copied the French practice of substituting an apostrophe for the letter e. In later use, -'s was used for all nouns where the /s/ sound was used for the possessive form, and when adding -'s to a word like love the e was no longer omitted." – Sabre Jan 12 '16 at 21:06
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    When "ya" means "you" there aren't any letters missing, but I think an argument could be made for "How 'ya doin'", on the basis that it's a further contraction of how're ya, pronounced slightly differently from e.g. "I don't know how ya do this". – supercat Jan 12 '16 at 22:36
  • @supercat - Agreed. I'd write that as How'ya doin'. – Dan Jan 13 '16 at 10:47
  • Note that the "yall" contraction is actually spelled "y'all", rather than "ya'll" – Arthur Jan 13 '16 at 11:48
  • @Dan: I'd be inclined to put in a space, since the point of contraction includes a word break [one wouldn't write "whether'tis better to ...", for example], but would consider either form, or the one without the apostrophe, reasonable. Different people pronounce the construct differently, and since the reason for writing anything involving "ya" is to reflect pronunciation, using different orthography for different pronunciations would seem appropriate. – supercat Jan 13 '16 at 15:59
  • @supercat - So you would write *How ' ya doin'*? – Dan Jan 13 '16 at 16:10
  • @Dan: I'd attach the apostrophe to 'ya; see my answer. – supercat Jan 13 '16 at 16:32
  • @supercat - the problem with that is that the missing letters (word, in fact - are) belong neither to 'how' nor 'ya'. – Dan Jan 13 '16 at 16:47
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It doesn't make sense to put an apostrophe after "ya", because no letters have been omitted. And that's what apostrophe indicates — it isn't a general clue that a word is shortened in some way.

In "ya", the "ou" vowel has been replaced with "a". We don't have punctuation to indicate that, so we just write it.

This is also generally the case where a replacement slang/informal word is missing letters, but others have changed. When this happens, we usually just transcribe the sounds rather than using an apostrophe. For example, we write "gimme" for the hurried expression which means "give me". We don't write "gi'me", even though that might make logical sense. And, we write "gonna" for "going to", rather than.... "go'na", I guess. (Yeah, not that.)

mattdm
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    Interestingly it seems people did use to write 'gi'me'. I guess, over time the familiar version - gimme - took over. https://books.google.com/ngrams/interactive_chart?content=gimme%2Cgi+'+me&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=" – Dan Jan 11 '16 at 22:31
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    And, I guess "won't" might be an exception to the general rule I'm giving here. But, it wouldn't be English if we didn't have a few of those. :) – mattdm Jan 11 '16 at 22:49
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    Well, also, the spelling gi'me doesn't represent the short i, so it looks like you want to add another m. And there seems to be an unwritten convention that in general once you add or change some letters, that trumps the apostrophizing to some degree and you just opt for a direct transcription of the sound. Examples: your gonna example, kinda not kinda', watcha, wanna not wan'a, lemme not le'me. – ThePopMachine Jan 12 '16 at 22:40
  • @ThePopMachine Hm. How about "kind'f" or "kind've" then? That's one aspect I hadn't thought've. – Dave Newton Jan 13 '16 at 02:14
  • @DaveNewton: I feel like "kind've" is the same as "kind of". I'm not capable of saying the former without introducing the same "uv" sound we normally use to pronounce "of". And unlike "c'mon", we aren't changing the emphasis or pronunciation, just the speed. I could understand "I'mkindofinahurry" if you were trying to emphasize someone speaking quickly, or "kindof" to do the same. – MichaelS Jan 13 '16 at 09:11
  • @ThePopMachine - 'Kind of' is a funny one. Because the 'f' is pronounced like a 'v' the 'correct' short version, kind'f, seems wrong. On the other hand, Kind'v seems laboured (and risks being interpreted as 'kind have'). Which leaves kinda or kin(e)duv! – Dan Jan 13 '16 at 11:36
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Nowhere, you're informal and/or in a hurry so adding apostrophes on proper places defeats the purpose in my opinion (unless there's some other purpose like writing a book or something).

disclaimer: now I'm not native speaker and this is not an advice about grammatical correctness

akostadinov
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    Normally one wouldn't write like this to save time (that'd be "how u doin" or somesuch). One would write this way to reflect a speaker's dialect and/or informal tone. – mattdm Jan 13 '16 at 02:16
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I would suggest that at least in some dialects, the phrase "are you" is (informally) spoken as something between "ee-ah" and "eh-ya", which is distinct from "ya" meaning "you"; I would suggest 'ya (with the apostrophe) as an orthography for shortened form of "are you", since any other notation for that initial vowel sound would be apt to cause confusion. In many cases, context would distinguish between the usages even without a difference in spelling, but I would regard the following as different questions, with somewhat different pronunciations:

  • 'Ya lost?
  • Ya lost?

The former question would be asking whether someone is confused about their location; the latter would ask whether they had been vanquished.

I would thus notate the question How 'ya doin' with the apostrophe as shown, pronounced as "Howie adieuing"; if ya were used to simply mean "you", as in "I don't know how ya do it", I would omit the apostrophe.

supercat
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  • Interesting distinction; I'm not sure about the apostrophe in the first case. The more I think about it the less I know. Ya know? – Dave Newton Jan 13 '16 at 16:41
  • @DaveNewton: English orthography often necessitates compromises when transcribing dialect. The first syllable of "ya" can replace a variety of linking verbs including "do", and in many questions the word "do" is grammatically optional but affects meaning slightly, so Ya know? or 'Ya know? would both work [though they are pronounced differently]. Note that the "ee-ah" pronunciation doesn't work in places where no linking verb would fit, e.g. with past-tense verb forms which can't be used as participles like Ya broke it. – supercat Jan 13 '16 at 16:56