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I think y'all becomes more prevalent once you get south of Charleston and especially south of Beckley.
I think the dividing line is further north. I live near Charleston and have known people from the area of Ravenswood and Ripley. They are southern in speech style. Find a point half way between Charleston and Clarksburg and see if that doesn't divide the speech into northern and southern. That would be somewhere around Flatwoods.
There are several places right in the city of Charleston where people live in "hollers" with the speech patterns and life styles that go along with that country life stereotype.
But you mentioned something that really bothers me, someone who knows nothing about WV writing a book set in WV.
Hard agree on this one
But yes, if you live basically south of I-64, you say y'all all the time. Northern WV doesn't really.
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