Earlier in the thread you scoffed at the idea that pal could ever be offensive, and seemingly didn't know about it's usage in the north of England. Now context is the determining factor? There are people who I grew up with that will understand pal as confrontational regardless of context. That is, if you asked them the definition of the word, they'd probably say something along the lines of "someone who's about to get decked".
I think that's pretty noble of you, and you honestly probably go to greater lengths to avoid offending people than I do. If you think that's the best way to go about it for you, I respect that.
Which is the right approach, because you recognise that language has regional and contextual variance. The difficulty in continuing this discussion will be that I don't understand why discussing that any further is considered a "whataboutism" rather than a natural extension of the conversation.
You're good people :)
They have like 5 posts.
On the surface it looks easy, but we learned in this thread that in some parts of the world other words like "guys", "mate" and "pal" can also offend people. Do you really want to erase all potential harmful terms of the world from your vocabulary?
The only possible way I can interpret it, is that each specific term needs it's own thread? Evidently the wider topic of language being offensive in ways that is not always easy to understand isn't really going to get discussed here. I guess that would be more of an etcetera thread to be honest.
It's not going to get discussed when you attempt to bring up whataboutisms in a thread with clear context.
I mean don't say 'sup' because that's super awkward. :D"Sup everyone".
It's a discussion I'd like to have, but if it's derailing this thread then yes, we can absolutely take it elsewhere. Within the absolute confines of this topic, I obviously agree that calling a collective of people "boys" is wrong unless you know they're all male. And even then it's not a word that's really part of my vocabulary in any context except referring to the male kids at my daughter's school.
"Sup everyone?"
"Where we droppin' everyone?"
Honestly, those responses I can laugh at as they're absurd (minus hate speech of course).
It actually feels unnatural to me to say that sentence without a collective noun, which is strange to think about. If I were in a game with just one individual I wouldn't feel the need to say "dude" or "man" or that person's name, but for some reason it feels almost mandatory when I'm talking to a group. Which is interesting insofar as it reveals how natural particular ways of speaking can become.
Surely you have the awareness to realise that in most cases those speaking are not the only people listening or playing the game with you?
I already said in a previous post that I don't really want to do it. If someone in my circle gets offended by term, I understand and respect it and will not use it in front of them (however the person probably has first to be proactive and tell me that. It can quickly happen that I forget that a term might make some feel excluded) . But when said person is not in the circle anymore, I wouldn't mind to use a term, that I classify myself as "harmless", again.
Where we droppin, gamers?"Sup everyone?"
"Where we droppin' everyone?"
For me, the main difference is that when 'mate' and 'pal' are deployed with faux-friendliness as in the example given (I've run into it in pubs myself), the context is evident, usually singular and completely different to when addressing a group, as 'friends', in a clear 'let's do this' way. That's because the UK hostile use of 'pal' is usually singular, sarcastic, immediately confrontational and directed specifically at the target to let them know exactly how much they aren't your friend.
