In Praise of Youse

Amongst language snobs, “youse” is considered substandard and hickish. Maybe it’s time for reconsideration. Like “y’all” in Southern parlance, or “vous autres” in French, “youse” is a nice, cozy, all-inclusive, gender-neutral term to speak to a generic group of “others”. It already exists – why not legitimize it? Bad language? Only if we say so. Which brings me to my next point.

In our world of diversity, equality, and inclusion, we torture ourselves with pronouns. Do I call myself “me”, “they”, “we”, or “it”? I know that some feel “they” is the panacea for non-offending personal address, but I think that’s a half-solution swimming upstream against language dynamics.

The problem with “they” is that it’s awkward grammatically. Yeah, I know that “they” is used sometimes as a quasi-singular, or at least non-number-specific. “They say it’s going to rain.” “If you give a person long enough, sooner or later they’ll come around.” But mostly, “they” is plural. Any time you have ambiguity, you’ll get confusion.

I’m also aware that centuries ago “you” was plural and “thou” was the singular form. However, the rule was never tidy. Saying singular “thou” to an individual to whom respect was due, such as a parent or a boss, was considered churlish. One would always use the otherwise-plural “you” when speaking with respect. Unlike French and German, we’ve moved well on from that clumsy construction.

Today, “we” is considered universally plural, except when it’s not. When used by royalty, “we” is singular, as in “We are not amused”. So, yeah, these things are a bit wobbly, and clearly subject to change over time.

Unlike French or German, English is a breeze when it comes to gender. The Canadian politician who opens its speech with “My fellow citizens” must then switch to French, “Mes chères concitoyennes, mes chers concitoyens”. But English, as it becomes increasingly gender-blind, sees words like actress and tigress losing currency. (But fortunately not “egress”- there’s only one way out for that word.) Our language is increasingly a simple one with respect to gender.

Recently I enjoyed a delightful but poignant presentation “Hey Guys!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJRO6QVzYRE) by Emily Nichols, a female engineer in which she challenged us to get past sexist language and pronouns. And who can disagree? But in addition to the resistance of cranky old men like myself, we tell ourselves that the problem remains that the English language just ain’t built for gender indeterminacy. We got rules! (There, I just busted three of them there rules, but you still capiched. Rules can be bent.)

Maybe we could just all become “it”. Why not? First and second person, singular and plural, as well as third person plural, are gender neutral, why not the third person singular? When you say “they”, does it refer to women, men, or a herd of elephants? See, it doesn’t matter. So, why not “it”?

“Well,” you say, “I don’t self-identify as an it!” Perhaps you’re right, but how does that make you different from someone who doesn’t self-identify as a “he” or a “she”?

If we had to, we could get creative and craft a new word. Take the fine example of the Office québécois de la langue française when faced with the need for creating a French word for email. The European French had as usual just adopted the English word “le e-mail”. So Quebec’s Office got creative and took the expression for electronic mail, courrier électronique, tapped it with a magic wand, and voilà, created courriel. Interestingly, courriel is making inroads in Europe and all of the Francophonie. And just for fun, by blending pourri (rotten) with courriel, you get the word for spam, pourriel. So who says words can’t be invented? (Note to France: stop whimpering about losing your language and take a lesson from Quebec!)

This can be done for gender-specific words. In fact, it has been done. Five decades ago, women were either Miss or Mrs., then a few “uppity women” began using the preposterous “Ms.”, a mashing together of Mrs. and Miss. Those of my generation remember the guffaws and outrage, but brave women persisted. Now we don’t even notice. It can be done.

In the meantime, let’s praise “youse”, and let’s cast off the ancient shackles of Shakespearean society, and let’s create or adapt non-binary pronouns that don’t torture logic.

Self-identify as “it”? After all, it’s only a word.