Quote:
Originally posted by Moridin:
I am having a problem! In the English language we have 'human being', 'man', and 'woman'. Throughout most of its history we have used the word 'man' to mean both 'human being' and 'adult male', but times are changing and we are starting to become more politically correct in our distinction (i.e. chairman to chairperson, postman to mail carrier). I am curious of two things
1) What are the words for 'human being', 'male or man', and 'female or woman' in your language (or for people like Cloudy who speak a second language what is it in the second or third language you speak)?
2) Do you use the masculine (i.e. man) as we do. Both as a gender neutral term and for only men? If you do, is it becoming a topic of debate and change in your country/language?
Thank you for your help!
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Moridin,
Interesting thread!
In Russian the nouns all have a grammatical gender which is separate, for the most part, from a being's actual gender and of course inanimate objects don't have any BUT grammatical gender.
But as for use of 'human being/person' versus 'man', 'woman'...hmmmmm
human being/person, would most often be 'chelovek' which refers to either gender. Hmmm.. this is most interesting...I hadn't thought much on it..but when one says 'young man' in Russian one uses "molodoi chelovek" but for a young lady, the word 'chelovek' isn't used! It becomes "molodaia dyevushka". "Dyevuskha", being the word for girl. And from other things, I guess I'd have to say that Russian tends to be closer in use for the terms you mentioned, to the American way of doing it. (the traditional one)
Amber
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[This message has been edited by Cloudbringer (edited 05-12-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Cloudbringer (edited 05-12-2001).]