4 ms·

I’m sure it varies but I’m from the midwest and it’s just regional vernacular. It’s what I would say if I were speaking instead of writing.

• diggan 2y ago
  I'm Swedish and use "folks" when talking/writing English all the times, just sounds more informal, cozy and folksy so that's what I usually go with.
• PKop 2y ago
  I am too and no one says it more than silicon valley or other urban dwelling politically active leftists. All my life I never heard it much at all until it became some cultural linguistic trend in early 2000's once Obama said it. edit: Seems like relatively recent trend, probably has peaked [0]. I'm not the only one that noticed [1][2] [0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=folks&year_start=1940&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=folks&year_sta... [1] https://newrepublic.com/article/156807/politicians-always-talking-folks-obama-biden https://newrepublic.com/article/156807/politicians-always-ta... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=rise+in+popularity+of+the+word+%22folks%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=rise+in+popularity+of+the+wo...
  • rsynnott 2y ago
    … I mean, yeah, the language changes. People do not use exactly the same words at exactly the same frequency as they did 20 years ago. That’s how English works. Don’t like it? Go live in France. (French changes, too, but in that case there is some active effort to stop it changing.)
    • PKop 2y ago
      It's a political signifier and should be recognized as such, is what I'm saying. As the New Republic described, it was a rhetorical "tic" of Obama, and is the same for other left wing types. It comes off as weird to me; not everyone uses it but a certain type over uses it a lot. So this is recognizable.