Re: CHAT: Homo Sapiens (was: fiery spirits)
| From: | Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, October 23, 2003, 9:44 |
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Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
> On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 11:32 , Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Quoting Robert Wilson <han_solo55@...>:
> >>
> [snip]
> >> from the entry "man" in the american heritage dictionary:
> >> "...
> >> 2. Any human being, regardless of sex or age; a member of the human race;
> >> a person.
> >
> > I know people who would take extreme offense at this use ...
>
> Quite so - that's why I regret English does not make the distinction
> between
> 'human person regardless of age & sex' (Latin 'homo', Greek 'anthro:pos')
> and
> 'adult male human' (Latin 'uir', Ancient Greek 'ane:r', Mod. Gr. 'andras')
> .
Well, you can always resort to "human".
Have their ever been an English cognate of Swedish _människa_ (or short
_mänska_ - both with irregular pronunciation of "sk" as [x]) or German
_Mensch_. Both have the desired meaning, altho feminists presumably don't like
the grammatical masculine gender of the later. (That they do not take offense
at the Swedish word being grammatically feminine has already been established
on this list.)
Andreas
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