I was raised to address strangers and those I wish to show social deference to as “Sir” or “Ma’am”. It’s a difficult habit to break, as it is deeply engrained.
What is an equivalent gender neutral honorific that is relatively common in English? If I can’t break the habit I’d rather have a substitute word to use instead of an awkward pause in the middle of addressing someone
I’d just use Google to ask but I’d rather ask the people directly rather than an AI generated answer based off of Reddit threads
ETA: I suppose if Yessir and Yes’m work, Yesn’t could too? Mostly joking… but maybe… 🤔
@jdr@lemmy.ml @Furbag@lemmy.world Wait, that wiktionary explanation seems weird too. I always thought of homie as being a derivative of “homeboy” or “homegirl”. I could be wrong, but I definitely started hearing homie after those two and have always thought that they were connected. In fact, the wiktionary page for homeboy lists homie as a related term, so to me it seems like the two pages are contradicting each other.