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"Guy" especially when used in the plural can and does refer to both males and females.
It's akin to using "man" and "mankind" to refer to all humans.
There are plenty of words which have masculine overtones or origins (or for which there's a feminine equivalent) which nonetheless have evolved to include women in their definition and popular usage. For example, "hero", "comedian", or "actor".
Nobody would sound silly asking a woman why she wanted to become an actor or saying "My Mom's my hero", so why is it silly to say something like "How are you guys doing?" to a group of both men and women?
"You'uns", or something like that, is supposedly common in Appalachia or parts of the Ozarks. Yinz, the one mentioned as being in Pittsburgh, sounds like it could be a variant of it. It's the right region anyway.
"Yous" (pronounced a bit like the word "use") I think I've heard as being parts of NYC or the Northeast. It sounds a bit odd to me, but really it might strike me as the most sensible. You pluralize many words by adding an "s" and although that's not done so much with pronouns it's not that odd.
There might be some others. I have to admit of the ones I've heard "You guys" sounds, for me, the most odd. Like something from a Scorsese movie. Also it isn't really a plural form of "you" it's just "you" with a plural word added. That makes it more like "You folks" or "You fellows" or "You people" or whatever. Although I might have heard it before, particularly at the end of a sentence like "How are you guys doing?" Not sure I remember it much, or at all, at the beginning of a sentence. Still I think I've heard "You (number word like "three") guys" sometimes. I guess "You guys" is apparently natural to some of y'all/you-uns though.
Well is somehow the Philly you guys or in Pittsburgh the yinz. I think even most in Philly say you guys. i never ever hear anyone here use y'all unless there is a southern reference or someone from the south. To me y'all sounds even weirder than yous guys but I guess it is what you are yous to.
What do you prefer? What sounds normal to you? What do you think should be the standard? I suppose your choice to these questions is what you use in your everyday language.
So what is it?
I started using "Ya'll" in many sentences once I moved to Texas. Everybody uses that here. And I love it. It's funny and southern. My teachers all use "Ya'll" in places it shouldn't be used. Such as "Ya'll's peoples need to get ya homework out because I'm not wasting time going over this again" and stuff like that. It's so funny to me. I started using it and I don't care if any northerner thinks I'm uneducated. It's not that serious.
"Guy" especially when used in the plural can and does refer to both males and females.
It's akin to using "man" and "mankind" to refer to all humans.
There are plenty of words which have masculine overtones or origins (or for which there's a feminine equivalent) which nonetheless have evolved to include women in their definition and popular usage. For example, "hero", "comedian", or "actor".
Nobody would sound silly asking a woman why she wanted to become an actor or saying "My Mom's my hero", so why is it silly to say something like "How are you guys doing?" to a group of both men and women?
I don't remotely claim to be an expert on the history of the English language, but with all due respect, this makes absolutely no sense whatsover.
Using "guy(s)" in the plural is not even remotely akin to using "man" and "mankind" in the same manner. The history of the latter dates back to the origins of the species. "Guy" originated in the masculine sense.
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guy (1)
"rope, chain, wire," mid-14c., "leader," from O.Fr. guie "a guide," from guier (see guide (v.)); or from a similar word in North Sea Germanic. The "rope" sense is nautical, first recorded 1620s.
guy (2)
"fellow," 1847, originally Amer.Eng.; earlier (1836) "grotesquely or poorly dressed person," originally (1806) "effigy of Guy Fawkes," leader of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up British king and Parliament (Nov. 5, 1605), paraded through the streets by children on the anniversary of the conspiracy. The male proper name is from French, related to It. Guido, lit. "leader," of Germanic origin (see guide).
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Face it, northerners/yankees To refer/call a group of females "you guys" has no basis beyond a certain modern day slang, and it does not even remotely stack up to "y'all" as being appropriate in a grammatical sense.
Now, I hasten to add, it doesn't matter a fiddler's damn if that is y'alls choice (hee hee) to say "you guys". No prob. I only get a little peeved (and one hell of a belly-laugh at the same time) when those who do say "you guys" presume to patronize our use of the perfect second person plural pronoun "Y'all".
Y'all is lyrical, lovely, precise, and poetic. It rolls off the tongue easy. And its contraction of "you all" makes MUCH better sense than "you guys".
Hell, it just occured to me, for all those who make fun of "y'all? Question is? How would you contract and phonetically say "You Guys" in the same applicable frame . Would it be "Y'gzz"?
BTW -- My own kids are half-yankee as are some of my best friends are from the North...so while this post might seem harsh...the harshness is really only resevered for a certain type of the breed!
I don't remotely claim to be an expert on the history of the English language, but with all due respect, this makes absolutely no sense whatsover.
Using "guy(s)" in the plural is not even remotely akin to using "man" and "mankind" in the same manner. The history of the latter dates back to the origins of the species. "Guy" originated in the masculine sense.
*************************************
guy (1)
"rope, chain, wire," mid-14c., "leader," from O.Fr. guie "a guide," from guier (see guide (v.)); or from a similar word in North Sea Germanic. The "rope" sense is nautical, first recorded 1620s.
guy (2)
"fellow," 1847, originally Amer.Eng.; earlier (1836) "grotesquely or poorly dressed person," originally (1806) "effigy of Guy Fawkes," leader of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up British king and Parliament (Nov. 5, 1605), paraded through the streets by children on the anniversary of the conspiracy. The male proper name is from French, related to It. Guido, lit. "leader," of Germanic origin (see guide).
***************************************
Face it, northerners/yankees To refer/call a group of females "you guys" has no basis beyond a certain modern day slang, and it does not even remotely stack up to "y'all" as being appropriate in a grammatical sense.
Now, I hasten to add, it doesn't matter a fiddler's damn if that is y'alls choice (hee hee) to say "you guys". No prob. I only get a little peeved (and one hell of a belly-laugh at the same time) when those who do say "you guys" presume to patronize our use of the perfect second person plural pronoun "Y'all".
Y'all is lyrical, lovely, precise, and poetic. It rolls off the tongue easy. And its contraction of "you all" makes MUCH better sense than "you guys".
Hell, it just occured to me, for all those who make fun of "y'all? Question is? How would you contract and phonetically say "You Guys" in the same applicable frame . Would it be "Y'gzz"?
BTW -- My own kids are half-yankee as are some of my best friends are from the North...so while this post might seem harsh...the harshness is really only resevered for a certain type of the breed!
Every print dictionary or online dictionary I've come across has defined the word guy to include a reference to not just males but also females. The argument was being made that to use it in that way (to refer to females) was not proper. How can it not be proper usage if the definition allows for it? That was my main point. But I stand by everything I wrote.
As to the rest I assume you aren't referring to me specifically but I'd like to point out that I am far from a northerner or Yankee. I was born and raised in New Mexico and have lived here all my life.
I don't remotely claim to be an expert on the history of the English language, but with all due respect, this makes absolutely no sense whatsover.
Using "guy(s)" in the plural is not even remotely akin to using "man" and "mankind" in the same manner. The history of the latter dates back to the origins of the species. "Guy" originated in the masculine sense.
*************************************
guy (1)
"rope, chain, wire," mid-14c., "leader," from O.Fr. guie "a guide," from guier (see guide (v.)); or from a similar word in North Sea Germanic. The "rope" sense is nautical, first recorded 1620s.
guy (2)
"fellow," 1847, originally Amer.Eng.; earlier (1836) "grotesquely or poorly dressed person," originally (1806) "effigy of Guy Fawkes," leader of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up British king and Parliament (Nov. 5, 1605), paraded through the streets by children on the anniversary of the conspiracy. The male proper name is from French, related to It. Guido, lit. "leader," of Germanic origin (see guide).
***************************************
Face it, northerners/yankees To refer/call a group of females "you guys" has no basis beyond a certain modern day slang, and it does not even remotely stack up to "y'all" as being appropriate in a grammatical sense.
Now, I hasten to add, it doesn't matter a fiddler's damn if that is y'alls choice (hee hee) to say "you guys". No prob. I only get a little peeved (and one hell of a belly-laugh at the same time) when those who do say "you guys" presume to patronize our use of the perfect second person plural pronoun "Y'all".
Y'all is lyrical, lovely, precise, and poetic. It rolls off the tongue easy. And its contraction of "you all" makes MUCH better sense than "you guys".
Hell, it just occured to me, for all those who make fun of "y'all? Question is? How would you contract and phonetically say "You Guys" in the same applicable frame . Would it be "Y'gzz"?
BTW -- My own kids are half-yankee as are some of my best friends are from the North...so while this post might seem harsh...the harshness is really only resevered for a certain type of the breed!
How does what he said not make sense? It makes perfect sense, today girls are actors, comedians, heroes, aviators etc. even though we have (or had) the words actress, comedienne, heroine, aviatrix. Words do and have evolved.
And it is very similar to the idea of using man and mankind for humans. Those words also originated in the masculine sense, hence the "man" parts. They still came to include everyone because it was and has been accepted that way, and comes from times when women were considered below men, and from the fact that men have been considered the default. Think of it like in Spanish, a group of men is ellos, a group of women is ellas, but if a group of 100 girls has even one man with them, they are all ellos. That's just how it is in many languages, guys has come to refer to everyone in English, and people can generally easily tell if you mean men or not in context. So yeah, there is alot of basis for referring to a group of girls as guys.
As for ya'll being lyrical and poetic, that completely depends. Coming out of Rhett Butler's mouth maybe, out of the Jed Clampetts and worse, not so much. And it only makes so much better sense to you because you grew up with it, just like you guys sounds much more right to us. In England they love to look down on American English like we do among regions here, but their English isn't any more right than ours at this point, it's just pride, bias and perspective. In any case, they certainly aren't saying ya'll over there, but then, they also say theaters are cinemas, etc.
For me, I say guys, girls, people, you guys, and sometimes you all. And it's no big deal to call girls guys up here, if you actually mean just men guys, people will get you in context and alot of times it's usually said in opposition to girls when used in that sense anyway.
"Guy" especially when used in the plural can and does refer to both males and females.
It's akin to using "man" and "mankind" to refer to all humans.
There are plenty of words which have masculine overtones or origins (or for which there's a feminine equivalent) which nonetheless have evolved to include women in their definition and popular usage. For example, "hero", "comedian", or "actor".
Nobody would sound silly asking a woman why she wanted to become an actor or saying "My Mom's my hero", so why is it silly to say something like "How are you guys doing?" to a group of both men and women?
comedienne
actress
heroine
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To refer/call a group of females "you guys" has no basis beyond a certain modern day slang, and it does not even remotely stack up to "y'all" as being appropriate in a grammatical sense. 
