Ned Pepper's Outrages

Monday, January 3, 2011

A New Anathema:You Guy(s/es)

When English speakers stopped using the familiar tenses and pronouns, a great void opened in the Mother Tongue which has yet to be properly filled or bridged. Perhaps out of revulsion over the "Nonconformists" who sprang up in 17th century England like so many rank weeds, after the middle of that century, 'thee' 'thou' and 'thine' fell into disuse, except in parts of Yorkshire. And we suffer with it today. The Jerseyites and our Guido-inclined friends use 'youse' for 'you'. Our benighted friends in the South use 'y'all' and 'y'allses.' But even these, annoying as they are, are to be preferred to the terminally annoying "you guys," applied to male and female alike, and its even more annoying possessive, "you guyses," or most dreadful "your guyses," as in "How was your guyses Christmas?" Compounding the insult is the fact that the questioner could hve no interest in how the questionee(s) spent their holidays in the first place, since no one has ever replied, "it was terrible."
Ned most gravely counsels his friends never to use 'you guys' unless they refer specifically to a group of males, and never use these hideous possessive plurals under any circumstance under threat of anathema.

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