Second person never has a gender in English. Saying "you" should also be fine, or "thee" if you feel like getting your quaker on.
Special requests notwithstanding - the platinum rule here is just to accommodate whatever you reasonably can.
Second person never has a gender in English. Saying "you" should also be fine, or "thee" if you feel like getting your quaker on.
Special requests notwithstanding - the platinum rule here is just to accommodate whatever you reasonably can.
Fwiw, second person is fine as long as there's no misgendering... It's like calling someone by their name
How you fuckers doing, eh?
Having exported myself from the deep South to Yankee land, "Y'all have a good one!" never fails to brighten the day of someone working a cash register.
In general, folks up here really like southern politeness. They think sugar wouldn't melt in my mouth. I get stopped in stores to talk all the time. Pretty frequently, they just give me a discount. I thought Yankees were supposed to be rude, but they're actually really nice in public.
Youse LOL, almost lost it when I heard it one time
"Y'all" has wider reach than this map suggests, particularly in black and queer communities.
Where's my fellow "yo'd'll"s at
Your what now
Oh....you know 😏
People where I am from call everyone "you guys" - men, women, trans, doesn't matter, everyone is just "you guys" even when it's a woman addressing a group of women.
The literal meaning isn't gender neutral, but in actual practice, it 100% is.
As for "y'all" or "you all", I don't see how it could possibly be interpreted as offensive to any gender.
"You People" is the one to be avoided
"howdy fuckers" is the opposite as it sounds bad on paper but in practice it goes over well (except with middle aged moms)
"G'day cunts" goes over either extremely well or extremely poorly, with no in-between
Ah the classic way to say hello in Australian.
"y'all" fills a legitimately useful gap the English language has. Other languages have a word like this.
Edit: also something cool I just found out, some languages have a way to disinguish "we" (you and I), and "we" (me and the rest of us, not you). It's called clusivity and is missing from European languages. Many indigenous languages of the Americas and Oceania have this, as well as Vietnamese and northern dialects of Mandarin.
English used to be like other European languages too. We had thou/thee for singular, and you/ye for plural, and for respectful singular. Eventually, people began using it as respectful singular for everyone, and so it just became singular and plural, eclipsing thou/thee. Around this time, the you/ye accusative/nominative distinction was also lost, so now we just have you.
If you're curious, the you/ye distinction worked like this: "you" was used for the subject (the doer) of the sentence, and "ye" was used for the object (the done to). you/ye are analogous to I/me.
"You come with me." (plural you)
"I come with ye." (plural ye)
As a result of the loss of thou, we also lost the conjugation of verbs related to it, like "art" instead of "are", and "-st" or "-est" for other verbs ("goest", "thinkst", etc). It used to be that "are" was only for plural pronouns, but now both "you" and "they" can be singular.
And if you're curious about what happened to "-eth", evidence suggests this was for a long time a typographic feature, and it was pronounced "-s" as it is today. It was used exactly like "-s". "He thinketh" would have been pronounced "he thinks".
I mean, neither "you" nor "all" is a gendered term in any way
I'm from "you guys" but I've lived in "y'all" and now I'm forever team "y'all," regardless of where I'm living.
It's the best export from the south, except maybe Texas brisket and pecan pie.
Y'all is the opposite of offensive for trans people. I lived in the south for a while, and I now use y'all specifically to be inclusive. I wouldn't say "you guys" is offensive to trans women, but I would say for me and likely other trans women it briefly brings to mind being misgendered in the past, so I would call it a small kindness to ube as gender neutral as possible.
Yup, I specifically use y'all and recommend it to people (like my parents) to replace gendered phrases, and I'm not from the y'all zone.
Still up for debate, "dude" and "hun/hon".
*I'm a trans woman also
As a cis male, I've exclusively been called "Hun / Hon" by waitresses and gay men.
I've not been offended by any of them.
I would have thought that “y’all” is even more so gender neutral and therefore less offensive/more accepted. It’s a contraction of “you all” right?
You forgot "Yinz"
Yinz goin aht n abaht in dahntahn Picksburgh to watch da Stillers game?
Yall is the genderless southern hospitality greeting.
No bullshit no hate. Only yall
I've used y'all intentionally as a gender neutral term for years in the south.
Lately I've even seen "y'all means all" used as a pride slogan in the south.
I'm not from the south and use "y'all" all the time. Find it very useful for filling in a gap that English has and slightly faster than saying "you all". Its gender neutral in my opinion.
Never once thought of it as offensive.
Y'all reminds me of the bible belt. I'm not transgender but I am queer and now and then it makes me uncomfortable.
Queer people who live in the bible belt still say "y'all". It literally means "you all".
Maine I think loops back around to y’all territory…
As someone that grew up in y'all territory in Kansas, it's wildly easy to connect to people from Maine!
I’m from Australia and I’ve started calling all groups of people yall because it’s gender neutral… very unaustralian term, and I love so much the irony of iconic southern terms being used to support trans activism
We need a better second person plural in English. Y'all works but its a big language gap
Hey...
Folks
Friends
Comrades
Everyone
People
Pals
You motley crew
Weirdos
Siblings
Fuckers
..how you doing, wanna go to the movies?
(this is by no means exhaustive list, the point is there are plenty of existing and perfectly acceptable alternatives, pick one, or more, and get comfortable with it)
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