"you guys"

Pistefka   Sun Oct 19, 2008 7:36 pm GMT
I have noticed for several years that this expression seems to be becoming more common in British English, especially with ameaning of "guys" which encompasses both men and women.
Personally, I find it irritating, and don't see why we can't continue to accept a bit of ambiguity when it comes to whetehr "you" is singular or plural. The form "youse" is an old dialect form used in the North of England, Scotland and Ireland (and no doubt elsewhere), and I have no problem with that, at least in informal speech.
Is it just me who has noticed this, and who finds it annoying?
I am not normally too bothered by language change, i is inevitable, and just as ineluctably much of that change is going to originate from American English, but a quick google of discussions of the term threw up some examples of Americans who were equally peeved by "you guys."
Its hard to express what I dislike about it. It sounds oddly condescending, a faux egalitarian mode of address.
What do you guys think?
(urgh!)
Uriel   Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:38 pm GMT
As an American, you guys is a perfectly normal part of my everyday conversation. As a female myself, I consider it pretty genderless in that context; it can be exclusively masculine in other contexts, though. Just as with the myriad other words in the English language that have more than one definition, we all know those contexts and applications if we are native speakers; only non-natives are confused. I actually haven't heard anyone take issue with "guys" being directed at females since I was a kid -- maybe 20 years ago? The usage has eveolved in my lifetime. Perhaps it hasn't made those same strides across the Atlantic yet.

Not sure what would make it "faux egalitarian". Not even sure what "faux egalitarian" really is, in a practical sense. Isn't being egalitarian a positive thing that we should all aspire to, or is that me being too American? ;P

"Youse" is still in use on the upper US east coast -- interesting that it has a (presumably original) counterpart in the UK. Sometimes it is even used with "guys", as in "youse guys". It is very regional and colloquial, though; you won't hear it throughout the rest of the country. However, Southerners have a similar plural form of "you" in their term "y'all", which is a contraction of "you all", and an even MORE plural form, "all y'all".

I guess sometimes people aren't satisfied with "you" wearing both singular and plural hats -- they want to make the plural uneqivocably clear. Hence, the term "you guys", which I think serves a similar purpose.

If it's the fact that it's an "Americanism" that bothers you as a Brit, well that's probably pretty understandable. Slang and word usage are very often bound up in our self-identity, even when they have no real impact on the price of tea in China. We don't get a lot of British slang coming this way, but every now and then you will hear people who insist on saying "shag" for "screw" or "shite" for "shit", and it really hits an off note for me. First of all, as an unusual form (for me) it really robs those concepts of their visceral impact. Oddly enough, I have heard Brits claim that "shite" sounds much stronger to them than the "weak" version, "shit" -- to me, it is just the opposite. These are purely cultural issues, of course.

I have now lived in New Mexico long enough to have internalized that curse words and insults are much stronger and more emphatic when uttered in Spanish. That would never have been true for me if I had lived in other parts of the US, and it's an example of a specific piece of acculturation that I have undergone, so I can kind of understand the change in perspective that you have between one culture and another. And, given that "pinche mamon" and "a la verga" are completely meaningless to most other (non-NM) Americans I know, it really does mark me as being in a specific group.

I think something very similar happens even within a country with generational slang. If it's from a younger generation than yours, it often sounds ridiculous to you for a long time and you resist it, and by the time you get comfortable using it yourself, it's probably passe anyway.... likewise, you eschew the slang of the generations before you, which now sounds comical and dated coming out of anyone's mouth today. But they all mark you as being part of a specific group and identity. Brits, Americans, and Australians cling jealously to their own trademark usages and resist acquiring new ones -- especially if they seem specific to a certain other nationality -- for the same reason. But sometimes there is an equal amount of appeal in those new terms, and whether they finally become part of a new lexicon depends on the interplay between those two opposing forces.

Younger people are always looking to define themselves with new identities that contrast with the generation before, and sometimes that takes the form of rebelling against old patterns of rejection -- as when white US kids started taking on black urban slang, to shock and defy their parents. Didn't mean they wanted to become black or were any more sympathetic to blacks or really wanted to experience firsthand the joys of living in the tough projects and having no economic options or life goals beyond street hustling and getting as much ass as possible before dying young, as the slang might suggest if you took it back to its true context and roots. It just sounded cool (and hell, the clever subtext of those root meanings was guaranteed to raise parental blood pressure -- two birds, one stone!) I suspect that adopting a few Americanisms doesn't make British kids any more "American" in outlook or sympathetic to the actual US. It's just a way to be different and piss off their parents.

And dang -- I went on and on about that, didn't I! Sorry..... ;P
We are slaves   Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:46 pm GMT
If hearing 'you guys' is something that bothers you that much then you obviously have a very easy life.
TommyHawk:   Sun Oct 19, 2008 10:04 pm GMT
That was the longest post ever written by Uriel, isn't it?
Rhoi (Sp3ctre18)   Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:37 am GMT
very nice post Uriel.

I don't know what else to say.

I think I totally agree. :P

Besides, lots of other languages have different forms for singular and plural, but English (at least) doesn't.

and yes, the ambiguity is a problem. I experienced that jsut recently. Saw two people I know walk by, and I asked "how are you," well, only the one who knows me better replied... the other must have that I wasn't talking to her. <.< That probably made me look rude.

I have to use "you guys" more,
Paul   Mon Oct 20, 2008 7:58 am GMT
We have no second person plural in the English language, so we have to be creative.

I don't even know what else I would say."You all" (which inevitably contracts to "Ya'll") is a bit southern-sounding, and not to my liking.

I have to say "you guys".
Pub Lunch   Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:27 am GMT
Pistefka luv - as I said in a recent previous thread - it bugs the HELL out of me too!!!!! I've never used it and will never use it. In America, the term may be genderless but why does that mean we have to follow suit here?? We had plenty of other alternatives such as "you lot" for example (note to Paul: we DO have a second plural here me old China) as well as "everyone" etc etc anyway so it wasn't even needed.

It's the worst!! And being at Uni it's all I hear, "hey guys", "you guys", "guy" "guys "guys"!!! Urrggghhhh - pees me right off. How the hell can girls go up to other girls and say "how you guys doing?? They sound like such planks!

And kids are even starting to use it to address their parents - how rude! My little sister referred to my mum and dad once using it, my dad soon put her right on the fact that Mum isn't a guy!! Poor kid doesn't really get it though, I mean, after all, that's how they talk to their parents on t he blooming telly!!

You never hear great British terms such as "lads", "lasses" and the such like anymore it's all just "guys". How boring.

I think, for me anyway, the problem is I have always, since a young 'lad', identified it as such a quintessentially American usage and hearing my fellow compatriots use it just sounds like a really bad impression. It's a bit like, erm, Americans suddenly all using "a very English term such as "wanker" or "mate" - it just wouldn't sound right.

Sadly it is now common place, and used by all English speaking nations, it's even worse in OZ. We'll just going to have to bat on with it.

Oh well, here's to homogenisation of the planet!!! Waheeyyyy!!!! Yeah, you're are probably right, I need to get a life.
Pub Lunch   Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:29 am GMT
Apologies for typos, just getting used to typing on a laptop - plus I am a bit thick anyway.
Pub Lunch   Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:30 am GMT
Apologies for typos, just getting used to typing on a laptop - plus I am a bit thick anyway.
boz   Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:51 pm GMT
<<Isn't being egalitarian a positive thing that we should all aspire to, or is that me being too American? ;P >>

There's nothing American about being egalitarian.
A Brit   Mon Oct 20, 2008 7:05 pm GMT
"Guy" refers to a scruffy person. Hence it usually means a man.
Pistefek   Mon Oct 20, 2008 9:45 pm GMT
Well, you guys, I should clarify what I meant by "faux egalitarian". Of course I was being rather pretentious, but what I meant to say was that it is a "put on" kind of egalitarianism, not genuine. The kind of thing a manager might say to seem to be "down with the guys."

Some alternatives that occured to me :

you two/three/four etc
youse
you lot
lads
you fellas
you chaps
"we"

I think one problem with these alternative second person plural strategies is that they seem too class based or perhaps peremptory. e.g. "Oi! You lot!"
I tend to use "you lot", or assume that my audience are intelligent enough to guess from the context that "you" is being used as a plural.

I'm not against all Americanisms entering British English(es) per se, its just this one seems to have slipped in under the radar with very little protest. Its also interesting to note that it ISN't only younger people who have adopted the term over the last few years. Teenies might be "early adopters" of the term but I think much older people have adopted it too. What got me thinking (and ranting) about it again was watching "Coal House:at war" a TV recreation of life in a Welsh mining village during WWII. All very authentic no doubt, until the drill instructor (in his 40s) says "come on you guys" and "you guys gotta get up that hill" etc. "You orrible lot' or perhaps "you men/lads" maybe, but not "you guys." they didn't say it in the early 1990s here, never mind the 1940's.
I remember being at Uni in the mid 1990's (he reveals) and one boke on my corridor said "guys, guys!" and we took the piss. If he had been an American then fair play to him, but from an Englishman it sounded erm, fey... He was from the south east though.
Uriel   Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:50 pm GMT
<<Well, you guys, I should clarify what I meant by "faux egalitarian". Of course I was being rather pretentious, but what I meant to say was that it is a "put on" kind of egalitarianism, not genuine. The kind of thing a manager might say to seem to be "down with the guys.">>

Hmm. I guess "guys" is not only gender-neutral but also very class-neutral in the US -- it doesn't seem to have any connotations like that here.

<<That was the longest post ever written by Uriel, isn't it?>>

Even while I was writing it, I was thinking, "Help! I'm typing and I can't stop!"
ASCM   Tue Oct 28, 2008 5:41 am GMT
How about you lot?
..   Tue Oct 28, 2008 4:49 pm GMT
<<How about you lot?>>

What a great English means of address - now non-existent amongst younger generations in England, and rapidly declining in use by older ones.