People who refer to other people as 'folk'

[BilliousBob]

People who do this make my teeth curl. AIBU

Totally normal if you're Scottish. Usually without an S on the end, whatever tense you are using. Also use queer as in "it was a bit queer" (meaning strange). So do my neighbours (they are a male, married couple).

I’m American and use folk as a variant of people in spoken and written form. Guys is sexist and informal. Y’all is a southern barbarism.

Yes. Also y’all and aw shucks.

I'm down South, we use the phrase folks all the time, including in less formal emails to the team or groups of people (Hi folks, as opposed to Hi Guys../.team.../everyone../ people,...)

It's suitable language and somewhat strange to read OPs comment

Never come to Yorkshire then

It's lips that curl.

Now then, we all know its "t'internet". Just ask Peter kay. Who is also from Lancashire. Or head fert Bolton.😎

As a Scottish person who has been using the word all my life, that comes a surprise to me.

It's regional. Don't use it if you dont like it

In Enid Blyton’s school books the girls always referred to their parents as their people. As in “are your people coming at half term?” Always sounded so odd to me. Do posh folk still refer to their “people”?

I second this. Last time someone told me it was a unisex term I told them to ask a straight man how many guys he'd slept with.

I do say folk. I think It's a nice, oldly-wordly term.

I did think it was quite inoffensive though-obviously in some folk's eyes I'm wrong!

I like a y’all or y’alls when said by someone who’d have been saying it twenty years ago. Used to live in a part of the US where it was everyday language. But it seems to be being used more and more in a very affected way by people who don’t fall into that category. A lot are the same people who use folks (or folx) in a twee manner.

Nothing wrong with any of these words in themselves, but I can’t stand affectation.

So true 🤣 I don't really swear myself but living in England I find it hilarious when folk

Posted too soon! When folk (see what I did there?) nearly fall off their chair when they hear the word cunt. It's just a group of letters! Didn't realise for ages my Scottish upbringing had had such an effect, thought some people were just really easily offended.

I'm Scottish, though we don't say folk where I'm from, and this is right analysis in my view: there's the traditional use of folk, which many pp have rightly pointed out, but there is a different, newer use. Traditional use fine; new use irritating and dubious.

Probably linked, though, since folk has a sense of "authenticity" (whatever that means) that is helpful in masking the divisive and engineered nature of gender ideology. Folx is so awful I don't mind any description of what it makes teeth do.

The word 'folk' doesn't bother me. The one expression I do find odd is 'he's/she's good people.' I don't get the way that the singular and plural have been merged in that expression. It's an American term really, I haven't heard it used in the UK.

It’s stems from the question “what are his people like?” (Ie do his family have social status). is he top drawer (good people) or bottom drawer (not). Gross really.