Talk:Mate (colloquialism)

Old comments < 2008-05-31
"Mate" seems to belong to the family of male-specific terms of address (such as "man", "dude", "pal", "dog" etc). Is this true, and if so is there a female equvalent? I'd call a female "Love" or "Babe" Buc 14:41, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

You can't really say, hey mate like you can say hey man. You say alright mate or how you doing mate, me and my mates are going to the pub, you can't say my men.

Hey mate how are you going?

I use it often.

Good on ya mmate.

gidday mate

Well, this article as stands is a starting-point.

One explanation -- I have no citations, but it may have been a CBC or BBC radio broadcast -- for the meaning not only of friendship, but of a bond of mutual aid, given the term 'mate' in Australia arises from the practice of chaining convicts in penal servitude in pairs. Standard English usage would dictate that any two items that belonged together would be 'mates' -- a cup and saucer, a left and right show &c.

124.181.193.113 09:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

There will be many variations in usage over geography, time, demographics.

I will provide one direct citation, in response to comments above about the masculinity of the terms described above. Not to contradict what has been observed, but to enrich the knowledge recorded here which will, one day, contribute to a broad and useful article citing the wider literature.

The context is that of an American lecturer who had lived many years in London, but had not lost much of his speech patterns. From Michigan, Dr. Tom Westerman explained to his students at the beginning of term in autumn 2003 that this was so. Therefore, he told them, female students should not feel excluded or forgotten when he would address the class as "you guys", because, where he comes from, the second person plural pronoun is "you guys." As a native of both rural and urban Southern Ontario (geographically, but not by historical demographics very close to Michigan), I can confirm that this is the usage in that region as well. The explanation was partly to avoid offence and partly tongue-in-cheek, but inasmuch, it recognises the limits of attempts to make gender-neutral language by de-sexing traditional words -- in this case, we can infer from Dr. Westerman's statement, the language is gender-neutral because the speaker (as do all his peers who use it) knows it is, and he wishes to assure the audience, who are from a different linguistic culture, that they should know it too.

124.181.193.113 09:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Two remarks about this text in the article: commonly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, that is every native english speaking country except Canada and America

What? Are you serious? You are on wikipedia, before you make assumptions, use the encyclopedia you are editing. English is the official language of more than 50 countries. And it's the "United States of America", not America. Also, English is and official language of India - You know, that place with 3 times more people that "America" ? Wake up.

1. Just a footnote: "Mate" is used colloquially by the industrial workers at the Newport News shipyard in Newport News, Virginia (at least as of 1979, when I worked there). In the second person, it means just what it does in Australia: it's the friendly way to greet or hail someone whose name one doesn't know. I never heard it used this way by, or of, a female. But in the third person it refers to a laborer (of either sex) who is assigned as "helper" to a particular mechanic; or, less frequently, to the mechanic in the same kind of relationship. Sentences like "send your mate over to pick up the supplies" or "the job goes faster when you've got a good mate" are common, and always refer to this formal relationship: "mate" in the third person never means merely "friend" or "fellow-worker".

I would imagine that this reflects a more widespread maritime usage; but, growing up in the area, I never heard it used outside the shipyard gates.

2. I believe there are a great many other countries (Jamaica, Liberia, South Africa...) where English is a native language. One could say "that is every country where the ethnicity of the British Isles predominates except Canada and America"; or one could just skip it. ;)

Rob Crutchfield 16:14, 16 June 2007 (UTC)