Mudcat Café Message

awe

User Name	Thread Name	Subject	Posted
Lighter	BS: Language Pet Peeves (1640* d)	RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves	19 Aug 20
> "OK, listen up, guys!" notwithstanding that there were both boys and girls in the group! About the norm in the U.S. for 30 years or more. So no exclamation point is required in these parts. The usage of "guy" is surprisingly nuanced. Grown American women call each other "girls" or "gals," but "guys" may be even more common among females under fifty or so. But it would sound very weird to me to hear a lone female addressed as "guy" by anybody. Men and boys, of course, are often addressed as "guy." (I don't intend to get into the complications of "bud," "buddy," "bro," "brah," "boy," "dude," and earthier terms.) "You guys" long ago became essentially the Northern equivalent of genderless Southern and African-American "y'all." P.S. Plural "youse" seems to be on the way out. And I've never heard anybody say "youse guys" who wasn't on a movie screen, though I can easily imagine it being used occasionally for emphasis. Neither of my middle-class grandparents, born in NYC in the 1880s, ever said "youse." Everybody was "you" (plurals: "both of you," "all of you.")

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