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As an American Southerner, I had a good laugh when I read this.

Depending on where you're from, this could either be incredibly easy or nigh impossible to pronounce.

Look at the words 'didn't' and 'hadn't,' first of all. In a Southern U.S. dialect especially, the 'd' in the middle of these words is soft, unlike the initial hard consonant of 'don't' or 'drive,' much like 'fiddle' (meaning violin in a bluegrass context) in the same dialect.

Y'all is actually spoken more like 'yaw' as in yawn.

The 've is essentially 'of,' pronounced the same as the first syllable in oven. In context, it would very likely be pronounced as a simple 'uh,' similar to 'woulda, coulda, shoulda.'

So in the end, you get something like 'yawna' or 'yawdna.' This isn't exactly correct, but it's quite close.

Again, if you are a Northerner, Midwesterner, Canadian, Australian, or British, this may still not adequately explain how to pronounce this contraction.

I would suggest listening to someone like Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy speak for awhile. Then, you should have an easier time imagining how this is pronounced.

I think most native English speakers would have similar troubles. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Also, different people will say this different ways: somebody from Virginia (like me) will say it differently from somebody from Mississippi, who will say it differently from somebody from Texas.

But if you're curious, I'd start with the words that it's contracting:

• "You all would not have" shortens to "Y'all wouldn't have"


• "Y'all wouldn't have" shortens to "Y'all wouldn't've" - practice saying that out loud a few times.


• "Y'all wouldn't've" finally gets shortened to "y’all’dn’t’ve" - it's like what you were just practicing, just without the "woul" part.

Another way to look at it:

• Start with "would not have" and shorten that to "wouldn't've"


• Take out the W and shorten it to sound like "ooldn't've"


• Change the "ool" sound into an "all" sound: "all'dn't've"


• Add a "y" sound at the beginning: "y'all'dn't've"

In other words, you're having trouble with the L-D-N-T-V part because you need the Y-A part, or at least the A part, before the L sound to really blend the sounds together.

Phonetically, I'd pronounce it yalldintuv. But realistically, I don't know anybody who would say this in real life.

In the South the phrase "Y'all would not have . . . " would most commonly be pronounced "Yaw woot nuh" with woot rhyming with foot. "Y'all would not have done that" = "Yaw woot nuh dun nat."

If the uncontracted expression starts as "you all would not have ..." the natural progression would be

• "y'all woudn't have" /jal wødnt hæv/ (with syllabic 'n'). This is exceedingly formal.


• "y'all woudn't of" /jal wødntuv/. The 'd' is more like a alveolar flap (like the American 't' in 'writer')


• "y'all woudn't've" /jal wødnəv/.


• "y'all woudna" /jal wødnə/. This is the most...relaxed/informal, and probably the pronunciation you should be looking for.

In the end, the 'y'all' isn't smushed into the rest. It's a separately enunciated word.

As to Wikipedia, the entries are not necessarily accurate representations of reality. Wikipedia, as good as it can be, at any one time can have difficulties which may or may not be corrected for.

I didn't find this expression in any other dictionary, but the actual phrase that was contracted would go through these steps:

You all did not have

Y'all did not have

Y'all didn't have

Y'all didn't've

It would sound like, "Yawl dintuv," which is quite a bit shorter than "You all did not have." I did not keep the /d/ in didn't've because if the person is contracting this much already, they probably would say, "dint've." If you did want to keep the /d/ it would be pronounced,
"didn'tuv."

I hope this helps y'all!

IMO, this isn't Southern. This is country!

I think the phonetic spelling would be y'all-ood'nd've, where the "dn’t" is almost swallowed. Since it's a contraction of "wouldn't", you'd still sort of pronounce the "ould", which sounds like "wood" without the "w". Then you just add a sort of extra "not" contraction, "n't" which sounds like the end of "and" but with no "a". So "nd". Then just add the "ve", from the end of "I've".

There's no hard T sound. I'm sure you know that in American English, the T often sounds like a D, so you shouldn't be trying to pronounce a hard T sound.

This sounds to me like a southern-ebonics twist on the English language, and would be pronounced as "y'all done eve", which would imply You all don't even.

Is it pronounced

'yawdintuv'

or `

'yawntuv'

Either way it's a pretty incredible descent from

'you all did not have'

which by the way is terrible grammar, better to just say

'you did not'

which could be contracted to

'yawdint'