If you don't want folks to think you're old, stop using words like "Folks" (move, state)

[Corvette Ministries]

Originally Posted by staywarm2

Word soda meaning soft drink. Seem odd to me. I think it's a northern term.

I used to marvel at my cousins in Minnesota who would call Coca-Cola "pop." But the way they'd say it, it would sound like "pap."

"Would you like a pap?"

A WHAT??

[Minervah]

Gee! Haven't heard the word "folks" in donkey's years.

Heaven forbid, anyone should mistake me, at the age of 70, for "old."

[Minervah]

Originally Posted by staywarm2

Word soda meaning soft drink. Seem odd to me. I think it's a northern term.

Originally Posted by Corvette Ministries

I used to marvel at my cousins in Minnesota who would call Coca-Cola "pop." But the way they'd say it, it would sound like "pap."

"Would you like a pap?"

A WHAT??

Depends upon what part of the country you are from. Easterners call it soda, in the Midwest it's pop. Or so I've been told.

[meo92953]

Yup, it's pop here in Minnesota.

[Escort Rider]

I dislike euphemisms and I dislike it when a standard, perfectly good word or phrase has been displaced by a new word or phrase without any change in the meaning. A good example of that is "developmentally disabled" for "mentally retarded". I refuse to use the former and if that marks me as old-fashioned, so be it.

[Chaofan]

If someone's life experience is so limited that he/she would be baffled by the use of the word "folks," it is unlikely that anything else an educated person rich in experience would say on any topic using even the simplest vocabulary would be any more comprehensible to the pitifully limited interlocutor. Therefore, any attempt at communication with the sadly limited and socially crippled individual would be futile. If a person has been so sheltered that the use of the word "folks" upsets him/her, it is likely that conversation with an actual functioning member of the human race would induce all sorts of "triggers," and the poor, limited, baffled soul would flee to some "safe space" and later go to an authority figure and demand that the evil person who used unfamiliar words be chastised and punished for committing a "microaggression," which is apparently anything that does not conform to the existing world view and experience of the poor, baffled, limited members of our population. It's just not worth the risk trying to talk to someone like that.


in any event, if someone is too stupid to understand "folks," then I don't want to talk to him/her anyway. And I really, really do not care what his/her opinion of me might be.


It must be awful to be someone like that poor, limited, baffled creature, terrified of hearing an unfamiliar word or being exposed to a new ides. It could lead to (gasp) learning something.

[Corvette Ministries]

Originally Posted by Chaofan

...

in any event, if someone is too stupid to understand "folks," then I don't want to talk to him/her anyway. And I really, really do not care what his/her opinion of me might be.

It must be awful to be someone like that poor, limited, baffled creature, terrified of hearing an unfamiliar word or being exposed to a new ides. It could lead to (gasp) learning something.

I'm not talking about someone like that poor, limited, baffled creature, terrified of hearing an unfamiliar word or being exposed to a new idea.

I'm talking about a young man unfamiliar with the word "folks" being used in context with his parents.

[Chaofan]

Originally Posted by Corvette Ministries

I'm not talking about someone like that poor, limited, baffled creature, terrified of hearing an unfamiliar word or being exposed to a new ideas.

I'm talking about a young man unfamiliar with the word "folks" being used in context with his parents.

If he is a native English speaker with normal mental faculties who has never been exposed to the word "folks" and cannot determine the meaning from the context of the conversation, then that young man is a poor, baffled, limited creature who ought not to be out without constant adult supervision. And if that young man does experience a mysterious word such as "folks" in conversation that he cannot understand from context and lacks the social skills to respond politely to ask what the meaning is (and to be grateful for the exposure to something new), then he ought not to be out at all.


I refuse to reduce my vocabulary to grunts and textspeak to accommodate someone else's intellectual laziness. Part of being an adult is learning how to handle the unexpected gracefully. Encountering an unfamiliar word is an opportunity to learn, not an excuse for dismissing the person using the word as old and useless.

[Praline]

I'm 42 and I still say folks and occasionally I'll refer to dinner (my evening meal) as "supper," simply because I like the sounds of it. When we moved from Chicago to Glendale, CA, I started calling soft drinks "soda" instead of "pop". Now, that I am in Washington, I've noticed that a lot of natives says "pop." Oh well, I've been saying "soda pop," to cover all bases.

[lenora]

Originally Posted by Corvette Ministries

Was it an audience of retirees?

Ha! The email was sent to practicing attorneys. I'm the oldest at 64 and I believe the youngest is 34. The legal director also uses the word "folks". It's all good.