Brooklynese in N.O.

[Mark A. Mandel]

Wilson observes:
>>>
 To this day, some sixty years later, I find the use of "gal" to refer to a
girl/woman to be, somehow, insulting. It's not as bad as "bitch," etc., but
it's definitely, for me, not a term to be used casually, despite the fact
that that's exactly the way that 99.44% of speakers use it.
 <<<

Interesting. Conversely, I use "gal" as a counterpart to "guy": colloquial =
'woman' with no judgment attached. (But this is idiolect, not dialect: a
deliberate choice to fill a lexical gap.)

m a m