A thought occurred to me some time ago about this word. I'm not as interested in the context it's used in (as in the sources I have below) as much as its phonetics and semantics (I'll explain why throughout this post).
It's use is most widely propagated in Mexico and for many (adults mostly) it is a derogatory term that is "degrading" the (Mexican) Spanish language. But Bucholtz (2009) demonstrates its use in the sociolinguistic contexts of alignment, address referencing, and derogatory name-calling as well as others. In case you're short on time, Tyler Schnoebelen, Ph.D. student at Stanford University, has his reading notes on this article available online (link found below).
What is of interest to me, ever since I started studying Indo-European, is the derivation of this word...where did it come from? What is its meaning? Apparently, it is a "deformation" of the word "buey" which is Spanish for ox. Anyway, its suppose to derive from the Latin terms bovis and bos. What is most interesting to me is the Proto-Indo-European morpheme from whence this Latin term came from which happens to be, get this, "*gwou-" meaning 'livestock'. It seems as though this "deformed" term has semi-reverted to its Proto-Indo-European origin in the (Mexican) Spanish language. Here is the link I used to approach this deduction which is a dictionary on Proto-Indo-European morphemes (its in Spanish, sorry!)...oh and the closest phonetic transcription of "güey" that I can come up with is [γwei]. Interesting, isn't it!
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