Wednesday, May 03, 2006
my office
My office is a bit crazy. Conversations are, for the most part, ridiculous. I wish I could remember them all. There was one the other day which was actually kind of interesting. It stemmed from the question: what's the female equivalent of the word "guy"? For boy it's girl, for man it's woman, but for guy there's nothing good. You can use girl or woman to describe the same person in different situations. If someone got up and gave a speech, I think they'd be referred to as a woman. However, if you met this same person at a bar, I think you'd refer to her as a girl. Some people get offended when you call them a girl because it sounds too childish or something. Personally, I don't have that objection - I actually prefer it - woman just sounds weird. So yes, we had an in depth discussion about this issue the other day in the office. It was rather amusing, although certainly not the most strange one of our conversations. For example, this afternoon I was half paying attention to a couple of my officemates when I heard this: "So, I started dating my mom..." The great part is that this is all pretty normal for my office...
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6 comments:
Freaky!
Humm, too bad I missed the 'guy' debate. I think 'guy' can be used for either sex.
man:woman::guy:gal
I think anyway.
Yeah, 'cept everyone looks at you funny if you say "gal". It's not really commonly used here in California, anyway, and would probably carry a somewhat-affectedly-folksy tone. Which really isn't what most people are trying to cultivate.
I use and hear gal just fine, though I definitely use 'guys' when talking about boys and/or girls.
I don't doubt it. And perhaps it's a word that should be in common usage. In most parts of the US, though, it pretty clearly isn't.
Perhaps one could take up the cause of the word "gal" as some kind of social justice issue, or select another word without so many associations to fill the role of the female counterpart of "guy". Or maybe we could completely genericize "guy" to include both sexes. That wouldn't be so bad.
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