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Author Topic: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?  (Read 4049 times)

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Offline Pyraxis

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #30 on: July 19, 2020, 03:14:27 PM »
My favourite part of the whole rant is "wermen". Not sure if mermen or weremen, but either way I approve.
Thanks :) Yeah, I thought that was a bit of a masterstroke, though i say so myself  :green:  :roses:

Wermen it is.  shoulda made that clearer.  The prefix " wer" or  ""were " denoted a male in  Old English and various other Germanic languages. Aww , let's be lazy and quote Wikipedia:

Quote
Were and wer are archaic terms for adult male humans and were often used for alliteration with wife as "were and wife" in Germanic-speaking cultures (Old English: wer, Old Dutch: wer, Gothic: waír, Old Frisian: wer, Old Saxon: wer, Old High German: wer, Old Norse: verr).
Etymology and usage:
The word has cognates in various other languages, for example, the words vir (as in virility) and fear (plural fir as in Fir Bolg) are the Latin and Gaelic for a male human.

In folklore and fantasy fiction, were- is often used as a prefix applied to an animal name to indicate a type of therianthropic figure or shapeshifter (e.g. "were-boar"). Hyphenation used to be mandatory, but is now commonly dropped, as in werecat and wererat. This usage can be seen as a back-formation from werewolf (literally, "man-wolf"), as there is no equivalent wifwolf yet attested.

Ofc  we're still totally familiar with werewolves etc from folklore, so i probably should have used that "were"" variant, shouldn't I? But then, you wou;dn't be so tempted to pronounce it like "woman". So ,  OK, my choice of that spelling was quite possibly motivated by sheer devilment  >:D.

Actually, I was shitposting,  :-[ I much prefer to take a sideways step into fantasy than wrangle over the particulars of language. Also I have no problem with "men" as a generic term for humankind. It reads to me as obviously archaic but not insulting. I'll stick with my therianthropes and Dekan culture, where "boy" means adult male or female and "nip" means boy (or girl).
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Offline Gopher Gary

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #31 on: July 19, 2020, 03:35:17 PM »
As a man that is all that I can be in the end.


Being a man in the end sounds naughty.  :zoinks:
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Offline Minister Of Silly Walks

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #32 on: July 19, 2020, 05:18:04 PM »
The problem, of course, is that we can't because none of us gets to decide.
Not sure what that's supposed to mean.

That none of us gets to decide how to change the language.

Not at an individual level. But language does change and everyone who uses the language can play a small part.

In Australia we already use a lot of gender neutral words. Like "spokesperson" instead of "spokesman". Enough people decided to be part of the changes already made, and it happened.
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Offline Leto729

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #33 on: July 19, 2020, 11:46:38 PM »
As a man that is all that I can be in the end.


Being a man in the end sounds naughty.  :zoinks:
If you wanted to be. :heisenberg:
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Offline odeon

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #34 on: July 20, 2020, 02:04:15 AM »
The problem, of course, is that we can't because none of us gets to decide.
Not sure what that's supposed to mean.

That none of us gets to decide how to change the language.
Have already decided. Seriously though, that may be the bigger stumbling point. Not necessarily and individual's personal decision, but the notion of deciding for others.

Well, exactly. It's not how it works.
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Offline odeon

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #35 on: July 20, 2020, 02:16:05 AM »
The problem, of course, is that we can't because none of us gets to decide.
Not sure what that's supposed to mean.

That none of us gets to decide how to change the language.

Not at an individual level. But language does change and everyone who uses the language can play a small part.

In Australia we already use a lot of gender neutral words. Like "spokesperson" instead of "spokesman". Enough people decided to be part of the changes already made, and it happened.

True. But those are all fairly new words and I would argue that the gender pronouns go deeper. The use of "they" as a pronoun is in addition to "he" and "she" because both of the latter remain in good use.

Finnish does not have gender pronouns, only a single "hän" used for both "he" and "she". Most people will say "se" (meaning the neutral "it") in everyday speech, though, and so they replace one neutral word with another.
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Offline Minister Of Silly Walks

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #36 on: July 20, 2020, 02:51:23 AM »
The problem, of course, is that we can't because none of us gets to decide.
Not sure what that's supposed to mean.

That none of us gets to decide how to change the language.

Not at an individual level. But language does change and everyone who uses the language can play a small part.

In Australia we already use a lot of gender neutral words. Like "spokesperson" instead of "spokesman". Enough people decided to be part of the changes already made, and it happened.

True. But those are all fairly new words and I would argue that the gender pronouns go deeper. The use of "they" as a pronoun is in addition to "he" and "she" because both of the latter remain in good use.

Finnish does not have gender pronouns, only a single "hän" used for both "he" and "she". Most people will say "se" (meaning the neutral "it") in everyday speech, though, and so they replace one neutral word with another.

True, but I don't see what the age of a word has to do with it.

We can change how we use language. I read an article right at the beginning of the controversy over pronouns and I've adopted the advice that I read in that article from that point on, i.e. if gender is not obvious, I try to use they/their/them as singular (which is perfectly valid in 2020) until I know the preferred gender pronoun. The reality is that if you make a mistake  it's almost never an issue, unless you are deliberately trying to make it an issue as some long-winded public intellectuals are prone to do.

Each response to this thread, for example, is about a hundred times the mental energy that I would normally devote to this issue in a year.
“When men oppress their fellow men, the oppressor ever finds, in the character of the oppressed, a full justification for his oppression.” Frederick Douglass

Offline Dirty Big Yoke

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #37 on: July 20, 2020, 05:59:54 PM »
lol, barely anyone wants to take "man" used in various words away, and I'm VERY open to people having different pronouns and generally have got quite progressive over the years. Very few people, even the most progressive people, think or care about it. A lot of it is performative nonsense to remove words that's barely problematic to begin with, that's why.

Gender neutral pronouns like they/them have existed for centuries, though. They have a use in this context.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 06:04:27 PM by wretchmachine »

Offline Dirty Big Yoke

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #38 on: July 20, 2020, 06:06:50 PM »
The problem, of course, is that we can't because none of us gets to decide.
Not sure what that's supposed to mean.

That none of us gets to decide how to change the language.

Despite people literally doing so since the birth of time. See how old English compares to modern English. Why do you think it has changed so much? Language is fluid and is subject to change by many factors, and social and political means have always been part of that.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 06:11:24 PM by wretchmachine »

Offline odeon

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #39 on: July 21, 2020, 01:45:27 AM »
The problem, of course, is that we can't because none of us gets to decide.
Not sure what that's supposed to mean.

That none of us gets to decide how to change the language.

Despite people literally doing so since the birth of time. See how old English compares to modern English. Why do you think it has changed so much? Language is fluid and is subject to change by many factors, and social and political means have always been part of that.

You are missing my point. We can't simply decide that we'll redefine this or stop using that. It's not how languages evolve. Yes, languages change all the time but not through conscious decisions.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

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Offline odeon

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #40 on: July 21, 2020, 01:48:03 AM »
True, but I don't see what the age of a word has to do with it.

Was referring to established use where there's little need for change.
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Offline Dirty Big Yoke

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #41 on: July 21, 2020, 02:14:26 AM »
The problem, of course, is that we can't because none of us gets to decide.
Not sure what that's supposed to mean.

That none of us gets to decide how to change the language.

Despite people literally doing so since the birth of time. See how old English compares to modern English. Why do you think it has changed so much? Language is fluid and is subject to change by many factors, and social and political means have always been part of that.

You are missing my point. We can't simply decide that we'll redefine this or stop using that. It's not how languages evolve. Yes, languages change all the time but not through conscious decisions.

I just pointed out that in fact people have changed it consciously. It always has been a factor.

Offline odeon

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #42 on: July 21, 2020, 02:37:11 AM »
The problem is that you make it sound as conscious change, and that is simply not true.
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Offline Walkie

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #43 on: July 21, 2020, 06:08:52 AM »
Gender neutral pronouns like they/them have existed for centuries, though. They have a use in this context.
If might repeat myself?

Invented words- even invented pronouns- do take root when they answer a commonly-felt need . "She"  certainly took root, didn't it? And we're going to have to be inventive here if we want to have both singular and plural gender-neatral pronouns, and to be able to tell them apart. And inasmuch as we want clear communication, I'm pretty sure that we do want both, even if some of us haven't yet noticed that. The drift towards adopting they/their/them as singulars got stuck partway because, so long as we also (and even pimarily) regard them as plurals , they are highly ambigous in any number of contexts.  So, we evidently need to either invent some  singulars (or commission some redundant or vulgar singulars) or else nab the plurals, and invent some new plurals.

How to get people to agree on any one particular solution is a bloody great big problem.  Yeah.  Maybe lobbying for one particular solution and calling people bigots when they fail to fall in line is the only fast way forward.  I don't like it , though.  And I like it even less that the proposed solution only adresses half the problem and leaves us no better off, linguistically.

TL;DR? or have we just reached that point when  a forum discussion naturally goes round in circles as new voices join in? (not altogether disconnected from TL;DR though, i guess)

I mean, it's implicit in my post (and several otherS)  that they have a use.  Indeed they have been used as singulars, at need,  for centuries. So we can take that much as read.  What we need is a bunch of non-binary third-person singular pronouns that work in all contexts without ambiguity.  That's not just "grammar snobbery". Ambiguity can kill. And in this particular instance, could potentially  lead to mass shootings where only one person was supposed to be  to be shot, couldn't it? 

Never mind if they/them/their are accepted as singulars by grammaticists. . It doesn't follow that we can apply them as singulars willy-nilly and still be understood.  Some discretion is required.  If the idea is to use them indisctminately, then we''ll just have to stop stop using they/them/their as plurals.  But then we'd have to invent new plurals. Seems simpler to invent new singulars...and/or or go back to that 11th C  "e"  (or "a" ) for he /she.  That has the advantage that it's already been contracted to the limit and can't be contracted any further, so could potentially remain stable for millenia :) without causing any confusion.   

The only reason e didn't endure was because the powers-that-were (back inthe 12th C.)  felt a need for gender-specific pronouns . Hence he and she were born, and e fell out of use.

That demonstrates that you certainly can change these things by means of conscious decision. But you can;t control the way common usage will wear words down (especially pronouns), so it makes sense to anticipate that. Given that "them" has already been shortened to 'em , which sounds an awful lot like 'ím, i'd say we're backing a sure-fire loser taking them as an official  replacement for him. Thus far, we've been able to avoid ambiguity (when it matters) by pronouncing those words more carefully. But if "them"becomes identical in meaning to "him" in all contexts, then that no longer works.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2020, 06:26:41 AM by Walkie »

Offline Dirty Big Yoke

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Re: why don't we just reclaim the word "man""?
« Reply #44 on: July 21, 2020, 07:34:27 AM »
The problem is that you make it sound as conscious change, and that is simply not true.

But... it is a factor. Not the only factor, but definitely one of the large ones. Even in cases where it doesn't involve "PC" speak eg. trying to appear more prestigious, polite or professional. This trickles down to common vernacular.

Why do you think people started saying "heck" instead of "hell" and is commonplace in the likes of the US even to this day? It was a conscious decision, and still is. People decided "hell" was a bit offensive and changed it as such - ironically this came from conservative christians!

You claim people have no decision or say in changing language, when in fact they do it all the time.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2020, 07:38:05 AM by wretchmachine »