• Hadriscus@jlai.lu
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    5 days ago

    I thought when addressing a specific subset of a population you could say “folks” ?

    • Nora (She/Her)@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      You can, maybe its an Americanism and outside of America you’d get weird looks, but folks is a good way to refer to a group of people?

      • nik9000@programming.dev
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        5 days ago

        I live in the US South and “folks” is a normal word for “people” here. I’m intentional not looking it up and trying to go from memory to get my dialect. I don’t use it for “humanity”, but will for any subset. “The folks who live in that house.” “White folk.” “City folk.” I dunno. There’s a shit ton of dialects in the US South East and they differ by geography and income and race and all kinds of stuff. And maybe they aren’t dialects. I’ve heard “register”. I’m not a language knower.

        Should you use the term “black folks”? Ask a couple black folks if it makes em feel bad. Do what they say. Don’t listen to this white boy.

        It’s built into my dialect so I’d use it. But if folks told me it made them feel bad if stop.

        I have no idea when I pluralize it and when I don’t.

        • k0e3@lemmy.ca
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          5 days ago

          Yeah, as someone who grew up in Canada, folk doesn’t seem all too bad either. It’s certainly better than “kind.”