On Tuesday 11 October 2005 09:37 am, Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2005-10-10, Terry Hancock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Likewise, "dude" is often used when addressing a female but > >> almost never when speaking about one in the third person. > > > > This I have never witnessed. That's bizarre. > > At least in the upper midwest it seems quite common for > teen-age boys/girls to address each other as "dude". For > example > > "Dude, you have got to go to the concert with us".
Ah, well, isn't that just replacing "man"? It's not really a form of address at all -- it's an emphasis particle, like "yo" in Japanese, or any number of curse words in English. I bet you'll find sentences where an address doesn't make sense at all. "Hell no!" for example, has nothing to do with Christian mythology, it's just a lot stronger than "No!". When you translate that into Japanese, might you use "Dame yo!" instead of "Dame!" for example, Japanese recognizes these as part of its formal grammar, but ISTM that they exist informally in English, too. -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
