[0] There's a joke in Florida that the further north you go, the more south you are. The further south you go, the more north you are. It's 100% true too.
Please use y'all. Y'all who don't use it don't know what y'all are missing.
shouldn't this be "don't know what y'all is missing"?
Also acceptable is "what y'all're" or "what-y'all're".
Edit" also "t'y'all're". Note that many of these sound much better said then they look written.
Y'all is usually positive, but can be negative "What on earth did y'all do now?!?", and "you lot" leans negative, but can be used positively "Alright you lot, lets get it done".
Tone of voice is extremely important in both examples.
Y’all isn’t what makes that negative. It would be just as negative if you swapped in any other pronoun (you, he, she, I, it, etc).
Are women in finance degraded by this extremely common linguistic quirk? Women in medicine?
As “colonist” as that term is it’s been adopted by almost all progressives, and not many actual Latinos. I hear it on NPR all the time
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
The term doesn't even have a broadly accepted spanish pronunciation yet!
I think the term exemplifies the issues that occur when (especially white) "diversity professionals" are given institutional power to speak on behalf of racial groups they are not a part of.
I'm happy to refer to individuals who identify as latinx as such, but I think it is wildly presumptive and slightly offensive to assume this form should be preferred in general when the Latino community has not yet accepted it. Something about the academic/professional class in America defining the term for a diverse group of people spread over multiple continents rubs me as off-putting and ironically colonialist. (But I'm a white dude, so my opinion doesn't even matter and we should all happily use whatever term becomes accepted by the Latino community)
Latine seems to be gaining some steam as well, and makes a lot more sense: -e is the gender neutral suffix in spanish. However, it is still not broadly accepted (as can be seen in this comment section)
You could also use "Latin American", which may also work, but historically Latino/a have been preferred, possibly since "Latino" is a lot easier to say than "Latinoamericano".
I did some quick searching and couldn't find parallels for adoption rates among other groups for new terminology. For example, the Black community has gone through several different self identifying nomenclature changes over the years. Were any of those changes immediately and universally accepted within a handful of years? My guess is probably not.
I'm Latino myself and I find that almost no one that actually speaks either Spanish or Portuguese (or another language commonly spoken in Latin America) as their first language adopts it. The few I've seen adopt it at those that are born and raised in the US and have relatively literal cultural connection to the country of their ancestors.
If Spanish or Portuguese are truly your native tongue, Latinx feels incredibly awkward. Personally, I'm uninterested in the opinions of those who aren't native speakers of one of these two languages when it comes to using the term Latinx or not.
I don't know how you got that from my comment. I am not advocating for Latinx as the one and only descriptor. I am simply pointing out that it is being adopted quickly considering how recently it entered the lexicon.
>I'm Latino myself and I find that almost no one that actually speaks either Spanish or Portuguese (or another language commonly spoken in Latin America) as their first language adopts it. The few I've seen adopt it at those that are born and raised in the US and have relatively literal cultural connection to the country of their ancestors.
>If Spanish or Portuguese are truly your native tongue, Latinx feels incredibly awkward.
I can't deny your experience, but I will simply say the numbers from that survey do not agree with your conclusions. The percentage of people who adopt Latinx actually grows for people who use Spanish more. The rough adoption rates are 10% for English dominant speakers, 14% for bilingual speakers, and 29% for Spanish dominant speakers.
>Personally, I'm uninterested in the opinions of those who aren't native speakers of one of these two languages when it comes to using the term Latinx or not.
I don't think this type of gatekeeping is productive. It is meant to be a ethnic identity. Anyone of that identities as part of the group should have an equal input on the naming conventions. I'm not aware of any other ethnic group in the US that is defined by different names depending on their native language.
From a data science perspective, I'd argue that "a (sub)demographic exists where >50% of people who have heard of the term use it to self identify" could be a good indication of when society should interpret a term as "meaningfully prominent". It looks like there is no demographic which exceeds a 30% proportion of heard to using Latinx.
I wonder if the term reaches this proposed 50% threshold within the college-educated LGBT 18-29y/o Latino/x/e population.
As far as she is concerned, Latinx is just another instance of white colonizers trying to impose their will on the indigenous population.
Is there a gender neutral term your wife likes?
A few Hispanic that were also LGBT started Latinx. LGBT Hispanic are not some hivemind borg and when people state "LGBT Hispanic people did X" it eliminates the agency of all the individuals who are both LGBT and Hispanic.
Aren't we grafting what's, at its roots, a germanic construction onto a latin-based word? It makes absolutely no sense to me.
It started among LGBT Hispanic people. Probably influenced by folx.
Latine seems to be more popular outside North America. Probably it will replace Latinx eventually.
In Spanish? I’m having a hard time imagining how a word in Spanish would sound with an “X” at the end. “Latine” seems easily pronounceable but I’m not sure what the point of adding the “e” is. It’s not like that vowel signals gender neutrality in any consistent manner in Romance languages.
Also in Latin(American) includes Portuguese and French speakers. Limit it to Spanish language/culture/heritage would be Hispanicx, which is also nonsensical, especially because I just made it up.
But I'm just a person who speaks Spanish, French and Portuguese, so take my word with a grain of salt.
Nothing signals gender neutrality. That's why people made something up. e is a simple replacement for a and o and sounds more natural than i or u.
Latine seems to be more popular than Latinx outside North America.
A much more ridiculous one is to change the word endings to reflect gender neutrality. You're supposed to write both endings separated with dots.
"Chers lecteurs", a group plural, so like in all latin languages you default to neutral (ie masculine), becomes "Cher·e·s lecteur·rice·s".
It makes text nearly unreadable.
Spanish equivalent would be : "Querid·o·a·s lector·e·a·s"
It really feels sometimes that this is a sort of soft English imperialism, forcing other languages to the margins by making their use "impolite" to the global audience.
Some people use e for a gender neutral ending. Elles instead ellos or ellas for example.
*Spanish Academy, royal or otherwise.
Maybe it's because you're asserting your anecdotal experience as truth, when it's not at all representative of most other people's experience.
It's hard for you to wrap your mind around people telling you guys is gendered in their dialect?
It's easy for me to understand that some people use "guys" in a gendered way, but I don't see what that has to do with people like me who don't. The argument seems to be that their dialect is "normal" and everyone else has to learn to speak like them, which sounds terribly exclusionary.
To me it feels likeanti-colonialist rhetoric perversely applied to gender relations. When you comment on colonialism it makes sense, I'm using a f'ton of resources from say Africa that saps that live there aren't allowed to. But for gender relations, it's not a zero sum game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_En...
that's ridiculous, honestly. it's just an example of how people can always find a reason to play the victim. you don't have to play along and reinforce victim mentality.
I can tell you as a gay man I appreciate when people ask about my partner (gender neutral) versus default to wife. Am I offended by it? Not really, it's right 90% of the time. But it's nice that people are considerate of other options when they don't know themselves. And you don't know that I'm gay by looking at me. Many women you do know they're not a man, so you would already know that you're using the male pronoun as default for all people when you could be more contextual to the situation (and avoid pulling the entire history of male-dominated societies and language with it).
I've seen "partner" being used in reference to hetero relationships more frequently in the last decade, and think that's probably a good development. "Boyfriend" and "Girlfriend" sounds a bit infantilizing to me when used in reference to adults.
One argument in favor of using partner is that boyfriend/girlfriend is ambiguous. My wife often refers to her close female friends as "my girlfriend", even though they are clearly not dating each other. It occasionally causes some confusion with people a generation older than us who aren't familiar with that usage.
Maybe it helps that although I'm very socially liberal, my stereotype of "people who say y'all" is "subtle and witty"?
Give it a try. Let us know how it goes.
I'm not sure this is the hill I want to die on, but where is the line? How few or many people have to feel a certain way to effect change?
I'm not going to argue right vs wrong or with you directly, I'm just explaining my comment and thought process.
and fwiw the first definition for guys/guy in most dictionaries is "a man".
The OED defines "guys" as a word used to refer to a group of people (male, female, or mixed). So if you ask me to not use a word because you refuse to accept its definition, that's very different to asking me to not use a word that is purely an identifier.
The first definition of "guy" in most dictionaries is "A Man", including the oxford english dictionary so while common use is that guys is genderless consider maybe it's not as clear cut and dry as you would like? And there is a reason why it's becoming an issue (the women and non binary folk who don't like it finally feel like they can speak out against it?)
google: define guys -> https://i.imgur.com/b6PJRsa.png
“people of either sex.”
I assure you the “woke left” polices their own —- it’s a constant source of tension between unity of political power and unity of beliefs.
Coke? Why not? It does me no harm at all.
The utopian ideal of everyone feeling comfortable will not be reached by prioritizing the comfort of the oppressors over the oppressed.
Yes, and they completely miss the fact that when other people make them feel uncomfortable, they don't respond by falling in line with the majority way of thinking, but instead react by becoming more radical or even violent.
There probably are cases where making people feel uncomfortable does lead to them changing their minds and accepting the position of the person making them uncomfortable, but I think the assumption should be that supporters of the status quo will just become more entrenched if they see people trying to make them uncomfortable, just as those working against injustice can become more committed to their cause when they face opposition.
Humans, on the whole, succumb to pressure to conform. And rightly so, the alternative is antisocial; sociopathy.
trans- is a prefix that means on the “opposite side of.” And so that’s where transgender came from. But then people wanted a term for people who aren’t trans and “not transgender” is awkward. So people looked and found that cis- is a prefix that means “on the same side of” and just went with that. Kinda clever honestly.
homo- same
hetero- different
trans- on the other side
cis - on the same side
It's absolutely a matter of principle, which I don't think is a surprise to you. I find that it's common to conflate refusal to oblige what amounts to policing my ability to communicate, with refusal to oblige someone's request to be addressed a certain way. One is just a matter of retaining my right to decide for myself how I communicate, but I've never had the right to say anything I want and have it not be capable of being interpreted as rude.
The thing is, you don't get to decide objectively what is wrong and right, or what I find difficult to fluently introduce into my vocabulary. A business kind of does, in so much as they can keep employees, but generally we've accepted a high bar for that, largely relying on subjectivity rather than them deciding to legislate bad words for adults.
You can't just decide that a term is objectively sexist or a personal attack, and "I really doubt" arguments aren't convincing, evidenced in part by you already implying it's anti-woman.
edit: I'd add that I'm not particularly attached to specific phrases like this, it all depends on circumstances and context, and a matter of what would make me start thinking about a change. Generally, I do think about how I'd address a group of people, because some opt not to use this or that, and it's best to find that comfortable common ground, and if you're speaking with customers I could probably more easily grasp a business wanting to pick the safest option, especially if it's likely to make it's way onto Twitter when my barista commits a faux-pas. If I worked at Reddit when they implemented their new policies for example, I'd probably start looking elsewhere. Pick your battles, and not every fight is worth your job. But if my company decides for me that this isn't an interpersonal issue, and I don't get to make these choices for myself, but that it's by definition hate speech, then maybe I'll go work on a farm or whatever you'd have me do. One that butches animals for mass human consumption; I hope that's ok ;)
This is why so many don't take you seriously.
I wish I were making this up.
One of my favorite quotes, because it was so eye opening to me, was along the lines of "we judge ourselves by our intentions, but others by their actions."
I realized how true and unfair that is, and tried since to understand intentions before making judgment.
Frankly, anyone who tells me that is wrong will never convince me. Maybe I don't fit in this world anymore.
I think it's really hard to understand gender dysphoria if you haven't been through it. I haven't, but if I can prevent reminding them that some people don't see them as the gender they see themselves, I should make the small effort.
But seriously, that's pretty heavy handed IMO to tell you that you can't use "you guys". Encourage? Sure! But not allowed seems a bit far to me.
Nevermind that "y'all" is common among white Southerners (where do you think African Americans picked it up from?). Why let facts get in the way of your attempts to control people?
Likewise, there's not a chance in hell I can pull off "hey y'all", well maybe if I was wearing a cowboy hat... :)
In any case, I use "Hey peeps..." (peeps -> people), which doesn't offend people (afaik).
The idea that it's sexist or problematic to address a mixed group as "guys" doesn't quite seem to have crossed the Atlantic yet, but I'm sure it's coming. The U.K. is never too far behind American cultural trends, especially the insane ones.
Probably, I've been in the US for ~20 years.
Someone can also choose to be offended or not. Apparently this has been forgotten in modern times.
I thought of the same thing, but there are these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peeps
You can try to homogenize language and culture to suit your own sensibilities. Since I view "guy" as a gendered term, then that's clearly the only acceptable definition and interpretation of the term. Other people's usage is obviously problematic and I want to compel them to change their language to meet my requirements and sense of acceptable terminology.
Alternatively you can embrace the fact that people's language is their own and acknowledge that the person's intent here does indeed matter. You don't need to adapt the same language that they use, but you could be mindful that people speak differently than you and that your discomfort with terminology is sometimes maligned.
How should you call them now?
I guess folx just doesn't have any translation to Spanish because it's a recently made up word?
> Of concern with the term “folks,” for example, is that its translation in some languages is gendered, such as “la gente” in Spanish, which is gendered feminine (see also, phallogocentrism, Derrdiean, and deconstruction).
Also, it's ridiculous to imply that the English language, which already lacks grammatical gender, needs to modified so that a translator working with gendered language knows that a noun lacks gender. It's English - they already know that! Besides, the translators choose which word to use when translating anyhow. There's not like there's a strict 1-1 mapping of "folks" to "la gente". In some contexts, you would translate it differently.
It's just such an absurd claim, and it doesn't pass the sniff test at all.
That makes sense to you? Help me out here, because I feel like I'm going crazy trying to understand this.
"Folk", is just an English word for "people". Isn't it just going to get translated into a totally different word in Spanish anyhow? Why would altering the plural spelling of an English word affect the translation of that word to another language? The meaning wasn't altered by changing spelling. It was gender-neutral to begin with.
Folks can be used in a way that is seen as demeaning to certain groups.
Is smiling at people still ok?
I kinda distrust people/institutions who/which use it? (not when they say "folks" though. That's fine.)
I guess at least not grammatically. But informally people might use 'pronoun' in a way that includes this meaning?
Imagine you took a job somewhere where in their region your field was overwhelmingly female dominated and “hey girls” was considered gender neutral. And you already felt pretty excluded being the only guy on the team and one of less than 10 guys in the whole company. And they’re not purposely excluding you but they didn’t even think that having outside of work team bonding of getting mani-pedis might be uncomfortable for you. Or the fact that all their reaction gifs and references in Slack are of girly shows you’re never seen. And so the fact that at every Zoom call, every company wide meeting it’s “hey girls” just reminds you of how excluded you already feel. So you being it up and ask them to maybe use a different phrase that is a little more gender neutral to you and they brush you off, say that “girls” IS gender neutral and that it’s not their problem.
You know what does feel super awkward though? When someone says "hey guys" in the chat, and then immediately trips over themselves to "correct" themselves, because they're afraid they've hurt my feelings or that they will be called out for uttering "wrongspeak". It's absurd to assign ill-intent to someone for simply using a slightly different dialect of American English than yourself. I'm from the south, so I say "y'all", and nobody gives me a hard time over it.
Also - who cares if your coworkers have different tastes in things than you do? You're not at work to talk about TV shows or trade gifs. The whole "you should bond with your coworkers like they're your friends" thing is a toxic myth that companies promote for purely selfish reasons.
And It doesn’t really bother me that I don’t have many boyish interests and so my entirely male rest of my team don’t talk to me very much about TV and movies or their hobbies but I still make an effort to be their friends because like we’re a small team and spend all day together. Being friends with my coworkers is honestly good for my mental health, the company be damned.
The team I'm currently working with are exclusively of Indian heritage, I'm white. They often talk about Bollywood films, what they did for Diwali, etc. Should this make me feel awkward or excluded?
I don't really care if the company I work for is overwhelmingly anything. I usually manage to find some common ground with any person on an individual level. I don't really consider what the identify as, or what social grouping they've been deemed to belong to, as having any significance.