Informal English usage and possible translation issues

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

How do you know the poster who used "Men" didn't mean to exclude women? They never said they meant "Men" to include any gender. They never explained what they meant at all.

The point is that I don't care if the intent was to exclude me (and all other women) from the discourse, I refuse to consider myself excluded that easily. I spent a fair amount of time in the nineties being the one and only woman in the room, I'm not going to be shoved away that easily.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ekbell

The point is that I don't care if the intent was to exclude me (and all other women) from the discourse, I refuse to consider myself excluded that easily. I spent a fair amount of time in the nineties being the one and only woman in the room, I'm not going to be shoved away that easily.

Sure, but I hope that you don't object to someone calling them on it. (Not saying you implied any such thing.)

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Arconte

I am really astonished by all this thread....

When you are proceding along a divided motorway and everyone else is heading straight at you risking head on collision, you have to at least consider the possibility that you are going in the wrong direction for your lane, especially if you are not in your home country. You might be correct and everyone else wrong, but the probability is strongly against it.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Whereas "man" has never meant "human" in many other languages, but always and exclucively a male human. So it may be pretty natural for people for whom English is not a first language to not know "man" once meant "human in general".

For example, I only know this because I've read older English classics. In Estonian, there have always been three separate words for "man", "woman" and "human". No one has ever addressed a mixed group in Estonian as "men", unless they deliberately wanted to address only males.

How do you know the poster who used "Men" didn't mean to exclude women? They never said they meant "Men" to include any gender. They never explained what they meant at all.

It means/has meant "human in general" in all Germanic languages. It's still used in that general sense to express the general "one"/"you" in many of them - "one/you shouldn't use screens in bed".

Estonian isn't Germanic or Indo-European, so there's no reason to assume that it would function similarly to English. (Which isn't to say that one wouldn't expect it anyway, as having knowledge of linguistics and/or different language families isn't the norm.)

But of course you are right in regards to modern English. Anybody addressing a group as "men" should reasonably be expected to be excluding any women present.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by kandwo

It means/has meant "human in general" in all Germanic languages.

Those old Germanic tribes were real male chauvinists.
(Seriously though, most people at that time probably were).

I wonder if man=human also occurs in other languages besides the Germanic?

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Is that a Barnsley supporter? Found via search as I don't remember seeing that word before.
I'm sad that the local shops have stopped stocking Yorkshire tea, though I don't believe it's grown there.

Could be.

From LLongman Dictionary of English

1 British English informal :- someone from Yorkshire
2 British English spoken:- a child who is behaving badly in a funny way
3 American English informal:- a small child

I was meaning definition one specifically. Though I have heard the second and and third definitions used in Yorkshire over the years so I think the third usage should read " (British/American English)"

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Those old Germanic tribes were real male chauvinists.
(Seriously though, most people at that time probably were).

I wonder if man=human also occurs in other languages besides the Germanic?

Women could have a very high status in Viking societies and were arguably much freer than in the period after Christianity. So I'm not sure such conclusions can be drawn from the man-human word connection (I don't know much about the southern varieties of Germanic or the societies where they developed, though.)

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Those old Germanic tribes were real male chauvinists.
(Seriously though, most people at that time probably were).

I wonder if man=human also occurs in other languages besides the Germanic?

Actually the Romans were far far worse than Germanic and Celtic tribes.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Actually the Romans were far far worse than Germanic and Celtic tribes.

Yeah, I know. And the Greeks were worse than the Romans. Funny though that it's the Germanic languages reflecting this attitude, not Greek or Latin (or do they reflect it? I have no knowledge of either language, so can't say).

[j.p.s]

As a native English speaker, I've never understood why inanimate objects have genders in other languages.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

As a native English speaker, I've never understood why inanimate objects have genders in other languages.

Only in some. In Estonian and Finnish, for example, they don't. We don't have gendered pronouns either (the same word for both he and she).

Every language has its quirks, I guess.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

As a native English speaker, I've never understood why inanimate objects have genders in other languages.

English has other quirks like a fixed adjective order, mysterious plurals, was/were, a/an, I/me, -ix or -ess for female version of title or occupation, rules for when a possessive takes or doesn't an apostrophe, with exceptions. Words that over the years take hyphens and become compound and why some will always have a hyphen. Hyphen usage when adding like for comparison.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Quoth

English has other quirks like a fixed adjective order, mysterious plurals, was/were, a/an, I/me, -ix or -ess for female version of title or occupation, rules for when a possessive takes or doesn't an apostrophe, with exceptions. Words that over the years take hyphens and become compound and why some will always have a hyphen. Hyphen usage when adding like for comparison.

Standard English has relatively few grammatical quirks compared to some other languages (perhaps even many others). I think that's one of the reasons it is so widespread (aside from historical reasons, of course - British Empire and its colonies etc). It's not a difficult language to learn. For example, I started Russian at school when I was 8 and English when I was 12; we had 2 or 3 times as many Russian language lessons as we had English ones. And still I knew English better than Russian when I finished high school. English was just much simpler to learn.

[Quoth]

And USA Culture Empire of TV & Movies since WWII, also movies from 1920s.
Also USA Colonial influence.

Not just the British.

I see Estonia has now cut funding for teaching Russian.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I see Estonia has now cut funding for teaching Russian.

Russian was mandatory in my time as it was the official language of the USSR. Since the end of the latter, Russian has mostly been an elective subject in schools. Younger generations no longer speak it like their parents and grandparents did. My Russian is extremely rusty by now, unfortunately. (Unfortunately because politics and wars notwithstanding, Russian is a language tens of millions of people speak in a neighboring country and so it's still useful to know here).