polyglot conspiracy

Lately I have noticed the young people doing something that seems strange to me. (By “young people” I mean people my age and younger.)  They use “guys” almost categorically when referring to males as a group.  This wouldn’t be so weird, except that there’s no parallel term (for me) that refers to females, and so when they refer to both males and females, the references seem unequal, because they’ll use terms for females that have equivalents for males but they won’t use the equivalent terms for males. They’ll talk about “the girls” and “the guys,” but also “the women” and “the guys,” and I think I even heard once “the ladies” and “the guys”. To me, “girls” and “women” are used in different contexts (something about age or maturity; let’s not even touch how “ladies” is used), and “guys” should only work as the counterpart to “girls” if anything at all. And they never say “boys,” which I realize is due to “girls” cutting a much wider swath of applicability than “boys” - you can refer to girls of many different ages, but boys seems only to be under 18 (but why??). So they talk about college-aged “girls” but college-aged “guys,” and also college-aged “women” but still college-aged “guys.”

This is especially interesting when you consider that definitions of “guys” are gender-neutral (MW):

3 a: man, fellow b: person —used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex

Is plural “guys” gaining gender? Did Guys and Dolls start this?

Just back from Sociolinguistics Symposium 17 in Amsterdam, jetlagged, just in time for finals! The conference was interesting and fun, and it was really good to see some of my linguafriends there. English is everywhere in Amsterdam, of course, and at the opening reception for the conference the Mayor of the city gave a welcome speech in which he referred to the “Nether-English” being created from the use of English in the Netherlands (it was his way of “connecting” to us, I suppose). He did not give specifics, but I had never heard this term before (though am not surprised that it’s a concept that’s out there, though perhaps “Netherlish” would be more like the names of other world Englishes?). There are a few hits on the web out there, but nothing like a Wikipedia entry or page devoted to information about Nether-English, that I can find. If you know anything about this let me know. [Also, doesn't "Nether-English" also sound like it's English that doesn't really exist, or exists in a parallel dimension?]

So perhaps an example of Nether-English is to be found in the Visitors’ Attraction guide book we were given upon arrival, which gives some hints about the Red Light District. My favorite is:

If you choose to visit one of the women, we would like to remind you, they are not always women.

Though not perhaps the most Nether- of the English in that particular book, it does have a certain alter-stylistic property to it that sounds very odd to my American English ears. It also reminds me of a discussion had between me and some Brits, in which I was asked:

Brit: Do Americans call muffins muffins?
Me: Um…if you are referring to what I call muffins, then yes, we call them muffins. If you are referring to something other than what I call muffins, I do not know what you are referring to, and so I do not know what I call it!

Women aren’t always women and muffins aren’t always muffins…let’s call the whole thing off!