Does your professor begin with “Friends”, and continue with “Romans”?
Because I expect this from certain types of professors.
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No good reason it can’t be both.
Also why I don’t use it. =)
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There’s always Jesse Pinkman’s favorite term.
But I think I now prefer Pixar’s less-problematic version:
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I’m not your PAL, NTSC.
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SECAM, is that you??
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I am perfectly content to change the spelling to “audients.”
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Weirdly, despite being a Brit and never having lived in the Southern states of the US, I find myself occasionally wanting to use “y’all.” It’s useful, concise and gender neutral.
Probably have to settle for “you lot” instead.
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I’ve begun using “you lot” specifically to avoid “y’all.” The decade my parents spent in the Ozarks generated weird baggage.
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I dread ever returning to England with my jumbled Anglo-American dialect and intonation. Although maybe not, apparently my homeland really enjoys importing everything terrible about America.
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gonna get funky…
NAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
do it! as a “recovering yankee” who has lived in the south far longer than my home state of Michigan, I can attest that it is the better option over my native usage of “you guys,” although I do still say that sometimes, too.
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In Ireland we use ‘Yiz’ quite frequently, though usually with a certain amount of disdain (e.g. ‘would yiz fuck off’) - it’s both plural and singular, it’s a corruption of another corruption, ‘yous’, and in Dublin in particular also has a related form for both ‘your’ and ‘your are’, ‘yizzzer’ (e.g. ‘Jacinta, yizzer dinner is ready’).
Not quite the same as ‘guys’, which we also use as well, but can be used in some of the same ways.
If anyone ever corrected me on a de-genderified colloquialism I would definitely give them an eye-roll.
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I’d expect them to direct me to the Guy Fawkes costumes. Not really my style, though.
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Japanese history, so no.
I would like to thank all of your for participating in this thread – seriously so and non-seriously so.
The general consensus is that guys is somewhat gender-neutral in current use, although not too far removed from male associations.
Not what I was expecting.
I hope everybody had fun! (this is not an end to the party, just speaking up before I forget.)
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It’s context specific of course. I mean, if I’m at a party or a rave or something and am addressed as part of a group of people as “friends” that’s fine. But it rubs me the wrong way at work because none of us are actually friends there. We’re colleagues at best, and users at worst. If I want to be extra passive-aggresively condescending on a support call, I’ll see how often I can call the person “user”. It’s pretty mean spirited, and I only reserve that for the worst users in the Org.
But yeah, a stranger addressing me as “my friend” sets off all the alarm bells and red lights in my brain, and makes me immediately want to either tell them “I’m not your friend, we don’t know each other” or just to wrap up the conversation and get away.
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This has been my observation (and frequent usage since living in California) too. I do see the point about it reinforcing the idea of male-as-default tho…
I wonder if it’s better to continue using it to further its de-gendering, or stop using it to avoid its current gendering?
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I can understand that, and my husband feels the same about his co-workers. I tend to be pretty chummy with my colleagues, though. My-friends… my-colleagues… (from Fry and Laurie… if I could find a video of that).
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I’m sure it would be nice to be freinds with my co-workers. As it is I don’t see them much. Maybe a few hours a week, thanks to the night shift.
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Well, in my line of work, you tend to get with a group and talk through your topics, which are close to your hearts. I’ll tell you, letting someone read an unpolished draft of a paper can make you feel really vulnerable, and it helps to have people you like and trust. That being said, you can have the problem of having a really intense rivalry with others, too.
I dunno… academia is kind of weird.
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That very fact…its naturalness and ease, is why I think it’s great. It’s something you fall into, not something you have to wedge into your vocabulary.
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