It kind of reminds me of Italian grammar. Regardless of whether there are 99 women and only one man in a room, the masculine plural is used...
Nonetheless, folks is a good word to use Regards, Matthew Rossi m...@pcpodcast.org +12539876413 +61488122990 Sent from my iPhone On 21/03/2010, at 12:52 PM, Melissa Draper <meli...@meldraweb.com> wrote: > On Sat, 2010-03-20 at 23:36 +1100, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: >> On 7 March 2010 15:53, Melissa Draper <meli...@meldraweb.com> wrote: >>> On Sun, 2010-03-07 at 12:36 +1100, Scott Evans wrote: >>>> On Sun, 2010-03-07 at 09:37 +1100, peter baker wrote: >>>>> hey guys >>> >>> And gals, please :P >> >> I think he meant it in the unisex sense, which when used as a >> collective noun is quite socially acceptable these days. Is there a >> better single word to use in this context? > > While it's used commonly as a collective noun in practice, it is still > always a gendered term. I know of very few grouping terms which > validly > applies singularly to members of one group of people, and then when > non-members of that group are also involved; even as a majority, it > also > applies to the non-members. Singularly, "guy" is never a girl. With > the > word "guys", a group of 5 guys is referred to as guys. However a group > of 5 guys and 10 girls is /still/ referred to as guys, and this defies > the definition of "guy" and hence it is an incorrectly pluralised > implementation of the word. It falls back to the era where a married > couple were typically referred to as Mr and Mrs Mans Name and the wife > no longer had an identity of her own. > > I find "Folks" to be a much more inclusive replacement. > > I'd also appreciate not have to defend my preference for women being > visible/women as opposed to invisible/"honorary guys" on this list. > > -- > Melissa Draper > > w: http://meldraweb.com & http://geekosophical.net > p: +61 4 0472 2736 > > > -- > ubuntu-au mailing list > ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
