I was raised to address strangers and those I wish to show social deference to as “Sir” or “Ma’am”. It’s a difficult habit to break, as it is deeply engrained.
What is an equivalent gender neutral honorific that is relatively common in English? If I can’t break the habit I’d rather have a substitute word to use instead of an awkward pause in the middle of addressing someone
I’d just use Google to ask but I’d rather ask the people directly rather than an AI generated answer based off of Reddit threads
ETA: I suppose if Yessir and Yes’m work, Yesn’t could too? Mostly joking… but maybe… 🤔
The scousers (people from Liverpool, England, UK) have a very useful one in their dialect, “Youse” (pronounced Ewes, like the sheep)
And it’s gender neutral, but also double as a group pronoun
(Person, are you going to use that?)
(Depends on context, can be singular, can be group, either “Person, are you going to go outside?” or “People, are you going to go outside?”)
It’s v useful
two yutes.
❓
it’s from the movie “My cousin Vinny”.
Ah nice, I remember it now, though it’s actually taken from real Italo-American dialects I think
Nice to see the Scouse dialect get a mention! But sadly I have to inform you that we nicked that particular one from the Irish.
Y’know, makes sense, y’all were one of their biggest trading partners for literally like 500 years
We’re all some degree of Irish here, even if just honorary.
Pittsburg is similar. Yens
Huh, it’s similar to the Glasgow, Scotland, UK gender neutral one, yons
From the Ozarks, we have a similar “yuns.”
I assumed it was a shortened form of “you ones.”
There’s a lot of your dialect based on Scottish and Irish, so it makes sense, y’all were Dutch + Scottish + Irish + English invaders if I remember rightly
Just a bit north in the Lou area we use y’all quite liberally.
It’s the etymology of it here