I am a girl and I use “guy” in a gender neutral way.
Vs. "person"?
The word "guy" (vs "gal", etc.) is literally signaling gender.
Not that I think it's worth much debate/argument, but still. When I read the OC I just substituted the word 'guy' for 'person' in my head, because I understood the meaning of the whole sentence being said.
I don't mostly, I just wanted to make conversation. As I mentioned earlier, I did the mental gymnastics and substituted "person" for "guy" in my head when reading.
Language is chabgeable.
It definately evolves, over time. I speak English but literally can't understand Old English (as an example).
My language doesn't segregate between an Uncle (for example) on my Father's side, vs. on my Mother's side, while some other languages do exactly that, they have two different words depending on which Uncle you're talking about.
Heck, we even use the same vowels but pronounce them differently in different cultures. English pronouces the vowel "I" as "eye", while (for example) with Persian/Farsi they pronounce the vowel "I" as if its an "E". Americans say "Eye-ran" for Iran, where Persians say "Eee-ron" for Iran.
Its important for Humanity to be able to speak to each other, to resolve issues and build a better social World habitat. Kind of hard when people manipulate the languages away from what they are, but then again that Humanity, never 100% perfect.
Thanks for writing this long post but I’m not really going to read it. Not interested in a side trackwd conversation about a non-issue.
I mean, it's not that long, I'm just quoting what you said before responding to it is all.
And kind of funny, considering you're here on Lemmy to read other people's comments.
And I really truly feel that Humanity needs to be able to talk to each other, and if they can't agree on common wording conventions it makes it that much harder to do. So I think it actually is something of an issue, even if just a minor one.
Overall, too bad, thought we were having a good/friendly conversation.
“Actress” also still exists, but many women in that business prefer “actor” and it is becoming a default.
Yep, I'm aware. They've gone back and forth on that though in Hollywood, not sure where they landed currently on that. The last Academy Awards was still using actress.
The existence of a word doesn’t change the fact that language is fluid.
The fluidity has nothing to do with the existence of a single word or not, but about human nature, and it's error rate/drift, and how all humans can't "stay on the same page" over a long period of time about the rules of a language, so the language morphs over time. Lol, basically 'cancer' for languages.
But we should try, so that we can maximize the ability to communicate with each other.