I say guys. If any girls/women/females/ladies decide to get all offended, screw 'em. Well, not literally. Well, not always literally. 
Shoot, I even call my MOM “dude!” My daughter, too–it’s a West Coast thing I guess… 
Dooooode, me three. my daughters say guys as well.
when my oldest was 2-3 years old, she used ‘guys’ for all prounouns. ‘give me one of those guys’ meant ‘give me that banana’
Why bring gender into it at all? Just all groups of people “you people.”
Hell, I go all the way…“Dudes, you guys are driving me crazy!” Male, female, anybody can be a dude, or, for that matter, a whiny bitch.
You guys is the very popular here in Washington. Gals is something my MIL and grandmother says.
China Guy: awwwww
:eek: !
I’m going to assume that you are kidding. I cringe even when someone addresses a group as simply “people.”
“People, let me have your attention!” is the polar opposite of “Dudes, listen up.”
“Guys” is fine with me even if we are all female. I’m probably beginning to use it more and more myself.
I really don’t like the use of “ladies.”
I have always used “guys” for a mixed group, group of men, or group of women. But being born, raised and living in California, that’s very common. I remember visiting relatives in Texas when I was a teenager and being teased by cousins for it. Of course, they said “Y’all” and I thought that was about as funny as they though “guys” was.
I find “guys” mildly annoying. We eat out at restaurants probably 6 out of 7 days and can count on one hand the times that we’re addressed as something other than “guys.”
It makes me want to look down and say, “Last I knew, I was soooo not a guy.”
Unfortunately, the word “gal” is getting a bad rap. It’s a great word but it sounds like it belongs on the lips of a sweaty cowboy.
We’re an intelligent community. Lets develop a feminine gender word that we all like and we’ll conquer the English speaking world!
I vote for “guys” but what happens when you’re speaking informally about two groups, one male and one female?
The men and the women is a bit formal.
The guys and gals gets you looks.
The guys and girls gets you looks.
The guys and the women just doesn’t sound right.
I was watching an Australian version of the TV show Survivor recently and noticed they had no problem saying guys and girls, or even boys and girls.
It’s too bad here in America so many sphincters get tight over it all. How is it in other English speaking countries?
A word that all women would like? When said by a man? Good luck with that.
I’ve got you all beat, dude. I’ve been known to call ladies “man” in informal contexts – and formal ones on accident. As in “Man… I mean ‘ma’am’, could you tell me which line is for renewing my driver’s license?” Or whatever, man. Nobody’s slapped me yet.
sigh
I worked in restaurants for years. I would often address people as “guys” because it’s a casual, friendly word. “Hi, guys! What can I get you to drink?” is an easy, friendly way to start the table.
I can remember one specific occasion where I said this to a table where a couple (man and woman) were seated. A few minutes later I went back with the drinks, and they were both glaring at me. As I left to go to another table, the man pulled me aside and said, “That’s a woman, you called her a guy.” I’m sure I looked totally stunned, because as soon as I said, “the term ‘guys’ is a generic one used by many people in North America to address groups including either gender” he backed off and looked confused.
For the record, I’m certain that the woman wasn’t a transvestite, either, which is the one reason I can think of as to why someone would get THAT offended by the term “guys”.
Sometimes, you gotta pick your battles. This is one issue I’ll never understand people fighting.
Exactly. Only even more… diminutive. :dubious:
Bridget Burke, I often use “chicas” when speaking to a group of women friends. But it’s definitely (IMO) a word that implies friendly familiarity, and I wouldn’t use it when speaking to any random group of women.
I also call people (both men and women) dude, despite being 35 years old and living my entire life in the northeast.
And again, despite the northeast thing, when addressing a mixed group, I tend to go with “Y’all”. Hey, it’s better than “Youse.”
On a recent thread in the PIT, this was proclaimed by nearly all to be 100% racist. :rolleyes:
I remember it was common for my grandmother and her friends, all in their late 70’s/80’s, to refer to themselves as girls e.g. “The girls are coming over to play bridge tonite after Lawrence Welk…”
I’ve used “guys” in the context of women, with seemingly no ill effect, in casual conversation as in “ok, thanks guys see ya tomorrow…” etc. This may be an odd, pop-cultural semi-acceptable result of the seeming obsolescence of any words that denote the sex of the person referred to.
Women do like to keep men off-balance, don’t they?
I don’t get this “gals” as a cognate of “girls.” To me, it goes
guys = (relaxed, informal) males
gals = (relaxed, informal) females
Age is irrelevant. To me, it’s a relaxed, friendly inclusive sort of term that’s hard to find offense with. But I know some people will. {sigh}
I also use guys to refer to any group of people. I’ve never had anyone express offense over it. Lately I’ve started calling people of both sexes “dude” informally. Again, never had a problem.
I’ve used “guys”, as in “hey you guys” or “come ON guys, let’s GO” etc, for as long as I can remember. So have most of my peers. Here “guys” doesn’t always mean just a male person, it’s frequently slang for “hey you group of people”.
I don’t mind ‘guys’ at all and use it myself. To me, it’s a gender-neutral language construct. As for ‘gals’ I use it sometimes for fun because it reminds me of 40s and 50s films in all their kitsch.
I think the entire kerfuffle about things like ‘womyn’ is inane. Being stuck with a genderless language, we need to do something so why not stick with ‘men’ or ‘he’ as the gender-neutral terms when not speaking of specific individuals. I think women who insisted on being called ‘actors’ instead of ‘actresses’ did their fellow females a disservice by erasing them from the language in the few places they did exist legitimately.
Surely people have better things to get exercised over than whether someone uses a neutered term to describe a group that includes people of both sexes. I once pointed out to one such sort that she really had to avoid talking about herself as a person or human if she was going to go the ‘womyn’ route.