Hotter, Badder, and Unpopularer Takes

[Torrain]

Sea-shanties are good actually, and make excellent background noise while you're researching, revising etc.

[Torrain]

The usage of "it" to refer to little children, which apparenty is not uncommon in English, irks me and strikes me as dehumanizing.

It irks many English-speakers and strikes them as dehumanizing as well. I never hear anybody who doesn't vocally hate children use it, (ETA) except sometimes for infants--and it bothers me when used for infants as well.

I'm the opposite way, as I wish "it" could be normalized as a gender-neutral pronoun that can apply to human beings regardless of age. I don't understand what's so terrible about things and people sharing pronouns. Romance languages do that all the time (in the other direction) and I don't think that has rendered the relevant countries more callous toward human beings.

Of course, I know it's probably too late. The grammatically clunky singular-they is probably the best we'll ever get to a gender-neutral pronoun. As if having the same pronoun for 2nd p. sing. and 2nd p. plur. wasn't confusing enough already.

I wasn't aware that "y'all" or "youse" could apply to a single person.


EDIT: Joke already made, I see.

Not a joke, I unironically like "y'all". I've never heard "youse" used in the wild yet, but I'm not opposed to it either.

I mostly (only?) know it from humorous or mafia-specific portrayals of Italian-Americans.

As far as I was aware, “youse” is mostly confined to certain British regional dialects, most notably Scouse.

It's endemic in certain Scottish regions, particuarly Glasgow, some parts of Edinburgh, and Fife, alongside other made up words like 'jamp' (past particle of jump). We're devoted to mangling the English language.

Definitely used as a plural though.

Also, there are variants in Northern Ireland - where my uncle's rallying cry is:
"Are all of yousens' coming?"