As a native midwesterner, I get more annoyed and defensive than I should when people complain that “you guys” isnt gender neutral. Where I come from, everyone is “a guy”.
It can mean “male person”, but that’s only if you use it in specific contexts that brings up gender (like saying “guys and gals”).
I don't think people outside the midwest understand just how ubiquitous "you guys" is here. After a previous time this discussion occurred on HN, I had to chuckle to myself when I heard my sister address a group of little girls as "you guys". It's our version of "y'all".
Even as far west as Colorado we used it the same way when I was young. Then I got a job at an NYC company and the gendered-ness of it was frowned upon. I actually switched to "ya'll" and it worked great. All the New Yorkers just thought that's how Coloradoans talk. So, thanks Texas.
Totally unrelated but this Blaze Foley song talks specifically about getting back to a place "where the people say ya'll." It's beautiful:
I am another Midwesterner who has largely switched from "you guys" to "y'all" (nit: ya'll is not considered correct spelling) after some lengthy and heated Slack discussions between Midwesterners and West Coast at $previousJob.
My first job was as a host at Red Lobster. I was reprimanded for saying "How are you guys doing today?" as I was seating a group of ladies. 16-year old me was trying my best to be polite, but language changes over time and that was one of my first introductions to code switching.
But this language has not been changing over time. This was a dictate from HR departments, made up from whole cloth. If anything has changed over time, it's that "gals" has been an anachronism for a long while, outside of a few isolated corners of the Southern and Western US where it can still manage to sound cute in some contexts. We don't really need a special diminutive for groups of women.
That being said, it's not formal language, it's chummy. If you're a 16 year old host at a restaurant speaking to a group of women older than you, you probably shouldn't be chummy.
I maintain that the sentence shows no disrespect to my Midwestern sensibilities. It's considered common courtesy to ask someone how their day is going, and I don't consider "you guys" to be a sign of disrespect. In fact, it seems quite clear to me that the parent was attempting to be warm and welcoming.
Warm and welcoming sure but too casual, you guys IMO implies familiarity, I wouldn't use it with strangers, could be regional or generational but that's my rural Illinoian take. Y'all is more flexible.
I agree with the other poster. Missourian and "y'all" is ridiculously less formal than "you guys". To me, "y'all" is specifically informal and is used in exactly that manner, even in corporate emails. It denotes a more conversational tone that's open to feedback. "You guys" does not exist within formal/informal for me, it's either, neither, or both, just depending on what you say around it.
"How are you guys doing today" spoken at a red lobster is absolutely fine, completely normal language, whether spoken by the president or by a child. It's the single most ubiquitous and wholly normal greeting that i know. Corporate really over does it sometimes
Fascinating - I'm from Michigan, and I would say "y'all" sounds more casual to my ears than "you guys." Formal speaking (in contrast to casual speaking) often eschews contractions.
That manner of social formality set sail a good 25 years ago my friend. On one hand I find it a shame, it was useful, on the other, it was also often misused (still exists in Korea where I now live, and it's abused like crazy here).
"Guys" means "people". I have grown up in the Midwest as well where it's common to hear girls and women use it to address all-female groups. It's basically like how "mankind" or "man" is short for "humankind" or "human" and not for "male". These are also backed up in dictionaries that are more than a few years old
One of my former employers only a few years ago announced that they would ban the term "guys" because some people thought it was sexist. The ban was droppped because many people openly objected to the needless censorship while others simply saw no problem with the word and naturally just kept on using it. It was around the same time when coders and real estate agents were working to ban the term "master" from everything
I’ve said “you guys” all my life (grew up in the northeast) but I’m a professor and teach mixed-gender classes from all over the world. Plenty of people are completely fine with “guys” as a gender neutral term and express bafflement that there would be a problem. However: a non-trivial percentage find it weird, not necessarily because HR told them to, but because it really sounds odd to them. One person asked me if it would sound normal to ask “how many guys have you dated recently” and I took their point that this would indeed sound very gendered.
The lesson is: things that sounded normal to you and your peer group growing up might not work in the larger and more culturally diverse world you encounter professionally. So why insist on them? I’ve switched to “you folks” which makes me sound like I’m about to lead a square dance, but people seem to find it disarming.
In 18th century England it used to refer to women. The point being that language usage has both regional and temporal variance, so why not avoid terms that some people might find uncomfortable? I’m offering this not as a dictate from the language police, but as a suggestion to improve your effectiveness as a professional communicator - a skill that is highly correlated with long-term career success.
but why is the prescription for speakers to converge on a single homogenous blob of usage rather than encouraging listeners to acknowledge and understand the diversity of uses?
It's true! But it's also imprecise because of that ambiguity. Take the following construction, "Now, all you guys are going to step off the dance floor."
Which could mean everyone clear out, or just the fellahs.
I don't get worried about people preferring a term that isn't "you guys", because it's probably an improvement to the language over all, even if it's some friction to change.
I don't think anyone would use that construction though in the midwest if they only meant the men. If they wanted all the guys to get off the dance floor they would say "Now, all the guys are going to step off the dance floor." "The guys" is much different than "you guys", at least where I live.
Granted, it is murky so I also don't really care about switching to y'all. The only problem I have with "y'all" is that it is such a southern thing that using it to me with my midwest accent sounds forced and awkward (At least to my ears).
This doesn't seem ambiguous. "All you guys are" seems to be narrowing the focus of the sentence, because otherwise it would be more fluidly spoken as "all of you are", and it sounds unnatural to add to the sentence for no other purpose. (It sounds somewhat unnatural under either interpretation, though). If it had been "you guys are all", perhaps that would be ambiguous, but only with a strong emphasis on the word 'guys', which is not how the phrase is normally spoken. Either way I'd expect the dance teacher to be using hand gestures at the same time to indicate which people they're giving directions to.
I’m on the west coast. I was talking to a neighbor about their barking dog and exclaimed “dude!” when she lied directly to my face (her dog was barking and she said it wasn’t her dog). Her reaction? Angrily saying she was a woman. Dude has been gender neutral for many decades around these parts.
Gen Alpha (and younger Zoomers) are working hard to make "bro", "bruh" and "dude" gender-neutral[1] everywhere - and they are succeeding. In decade, those complaining about "you guys" will seem quaint.
"breh" was and will be gender-neutral in south Louisiana long after everyone else has forgotten any debates around whether or not it actually is or whatever it was co-opted from
have a feeling hawaiians feel similarly about "brah"/"braddah"
Evidence that white people came up with Latinx? My sense was always that Hispanic leftists came up with it, and it was then amplified by their white leftist friends.
Which is maybe a distinction without a difference, and I realize that you were probably just making a pithy statement. But I think its important if we want to examine how something like that actually came to be.
Isn't "folx" lingo or jargon? Like, let me explain a bit...
Just like "shade", "tea", and other queer lingo that was predominantly used within the queer community, "folx" was originally (in recent usage) a term that was used by some queer folk as a signal to indicate safety and inclusiveness.
But like "shade", some outsiders heard that jargon and started using it in communities where it wasn't common, and didn't carry the original intent, and so it looked confusing or annoying.
I think it's fine for communities to have vernacular words that are understood within their community, I suspect the real "villains" here to you are the folk who pull that jargon out and try to make it widespread.
People absolutely say "folks" in person nowadays (of course you wouldn't be able to hear a distinction between "ks" and "x"). It's common (although, yes, mediated by subculture) around where I live.
I grew up in a culture where nobody had a problem with "you guys". I am really not that old, and I still live in the same city.
As for "not carrying the original intent" - I don't see how there's any meaningful difference in intent.
These are all black American words, not "queer lingo." Other than "folks" which is Southern, but comes to upper-middle class white people through Obama's act of pretending he had ever met black Americans before college at UCLA.
They come from the long tradition of gay men copying black American female mannerisms, not anything "queer."
> I suspect the real "villains" here to you are the folk who pull that jargon out and try to make it widespread.
Gay men have contributed a lot to world culture, they're not villains.
Go watch Paris is Burning. They absolutely are Black queer lingo for decades prior to them becoming known outside Black communities. Which then became queer lingo. Which then became popular lingo.
> Gay men have contributed a lot to world culture, they're not villains
Absolutely, I never insinuated otherwise. I also don't believe it's villainous to share one's culture and lingo. But the op who objected to folx appears to think that it is bad. Take it up with them!
They are referring to "shade" and "tea". Eg in "That's the tea. All tea, no shade."
Meaning "that's the truth, the straight truth, no disrespect intended".
These terms rose in popularity in the ballroom scene in New York. (Note: not ballroom dancing, but rather "drag ball" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_culture). The culture of that scene was predominantly Black and Latino.
I'm answering in good faith, assuming the question is in good faith.
Latin@ (or latine or latinao) are all attempts to add non gendered versions of gendered words in Spanish.
Some percentage of the population, probably in the tenths of a percentage point, identify as non binary. Those people prefer to use non gendered indicators where possible.
That's ... kinda possible in English, where you can use they/them or replace father with parent, for instance.
In Romance languages this is much more difficult because adjectives are supposed to agree with the gender of the person -- for instance roja is red, feminine, and rojo is red, masculine.
So, there is a genuine movement by people who are non binary to try out different things. Combining the an and o, for instance, to get rojao, or roj@. Or using a third vowel to indicate gender neutrality, e.g. roje.
It's extremely important, imo, to differentiate this from Latinx. Latinx is an American English construct, latin@ is a Spanish language construct. Latinx is an almost exclusively American (and therefore largely exogenous concept to Spanish speakers), whereas latine is a Chilean/Argentinian construction that is endogenous.
Hope this comment is helpful, I'd ask that people vote on it based on whether they felt I made a good faith effort to factually answer this person's question, even if they dislike the idea of gender neutral Romance languages.
Considering the comment history of the person you are talking to (basically only ever replies to fight over social justice), I think they must be mentioning a real trend.
I've been a grown adult for a long time and still use boyfriend/girlfriend. This obsession with absolute correctness is probably why we are so miserable all the time.
To me it's simple
1. Married -> Husband/Wife
2. Dating -> Girlfriend/Boyfriend
3. Middle Ground -> Fiance/fiancee
I've yet to see a case this doesn't cover so "partner" seems like a solution looking for a problem.
I wonder why you find the term "partner" insufferable? As a Midwesterner comfortable with "you guys," I refer to my partner as my partner because it feels far more appropriate after dating for 7 years than "girlfriend." I also don't care whether others assume I am straight or gay.
I've still never heard, for example "this guy" when referring to eg a specific female coworker. I live in the midwest. "You guys" is frequently used as a genderless plural sure I guess but "guy" is not gender neutral.
Right, it's only the plural that's gender neutral. Kinda like how in Spanish "abeula" means "grandma", "abuelas" means "grandmas", and "abuelo" means "grandpa", but "abuelos" means "grandparents", not "grandpas". The masculine plural is gender inclusive in most contexts.
Ok but that's a different claim than the one I was originally replying to.
And anyway the masculine plural being genderless is a convention of romance languages, which english is not. It is not useful or consistent to describe expectations for english usage in terms of the features of other languages. Negative concord and invariant be are common language features globally but you don't hear white americans scrambling to include them in standard usage.
There are plenty of other situations in English where the masculine plural is gender inclusive (probably because so much of English is borrowed from romance languages). For example, "actors" can refer to both male and female actors, "actresses" cannot.
Identity politics has resulted in certain groups making concerted efforts to try to eliminate such usages, but it's still an ingrained part of our language.
"it" in this case referring to gender inclusive masculine plural nouns as a feature of the English language, not the particular use of "you guys" as one. That phrasing may well be new. Actually it seems like the phrase "you guys" is itself pretty new, see: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=you+guys&year_...
Context changed the use of language. If you know any foreign languages you know two words that are more or less the same carry a different meaning in context.
Because it's for group greetings and not addressing individuals. e.g. My female friend from Long Island uses it to address her friends in group settings but never has referred to her wife as "guy" and neither has anyone I ever knew growing up in NY.
It can mean “male person”, but that’s only if you use it in specific contexts that brings up gender (like saying “guys and gals”).