Edit: a lot of people have corrected me on the below, that the wife in midwife refers to the person giving birth, not the person supporting them through that. And male midwives should be midweres
@@Albinojackrussel no, because it's a common misconception that 'wife' in midwife is referring to the gender of the midwife (so common that historically, especially in the 18th century, there was such a thing as a 'man midwife', a term for male [proto-]obstetricians, who sometimes weren't viewed as, or qualified as, doctors in other areas of medicine, though they very often also could be) - 'mid' means with, so midwife is 'with woman', so the person (often woman, but not necessarily) who is 'with' a woman to assist her in labour and giving birth. (Which suggests that a midwere, if such a thing existed, would probably be somebody who is with, and supports, a man during some difficult, possibly medical but not necessarily because I don't think there is anything really comparable, experience. ETA: or there isn't for cis men, at least, because as @ragnkja points out, those assisting trans men 'seahorse dads' in labour, when such cases have occurred and do so in future, can arguably, and perhaps should, be called midweres.) (But I don't know if it'd catch on. If only in as much as people very commonly do think it's about the gender of the medical person, to the point we even now have the term 'male midwife' because women are assumed so much to be the default for the job, so I don't think people would think to alter the term based on the gender of the patient, even if, based on the original Old English etymology, it would be more 'correct' to do so. But the thing is that language shifts and changes, and we've naturally come a long way since Old English, so even though it is true that midwife is etymologically 'with woman' and originally about the gender of the person undergoing labour, not the one providing care, at this point, in modern English, it pretty much just means the qualified medical professional performing that role for somebody, regardless of the patient's gender and, used properly and/or in circumstances where it isn't necessary to specify [use 'male midwife'] for extenuating reasons, also regardless of the caregiver's gender. And of course the meaning and usage could shift again, but it's become very entrenched by this point.)
@@Albinojackrussel No, the “wife” in the word “midwife” is the one giving birth, and the midwife is the person who is _with_ her. A midwere is someone who helps out when a trans man gives birth.
I also recently learned that the word "girl" used to also be a gender neutral term for a child or youngster, and sex/gender was indicated with an additional term, "knave girl" for a male child, and "gay girl" for a female child.
You'd think, but tons of people still think that even Tolkien and the Bible are specifically referring to males when men is used to mean humans generally.
@@g.e.causey Who, though? That doesn’t feel true to me. I don’t have sources to cite, of course, but neither do you. I feel like it would take some pretty advanced illiteracy to read that incorrectly.
@@alirubaii4839 I can only say that I've seen it happen. Calling it advanced illiteracy seems rather unkind, and I don't really see how it's so unbelievable. Not everyone is a native English speaker, and even among native speakers not everyone has been taught how to read old fashioned writing or knows all of the ways in which language has evolved over time, and ignorance is only a personal failing when it is willful.
I always spell it dwarfs in my own writing because I believe English should be more regular and simple. I'm less concerned with indicating where it came from or how it entered English.
@@InnerProp - Irregularities are a natural part of every language. Adding irregularities where none previously existed, so as to match other similar words is also a natural part of evolution. Ergo, it doesn’t really matter “where a word came from”, only what a plurality of speakers agrees too. Wanting English to be “regular and simple” is a very prescriptivist mindset, no different than those who are adamant about etymological origins. Like the “octopuses/octopi” argument. The former emphasizes origin, the latter matches with similar words (“cacti”). As things stand, dwarves is the most commonly accepted spelling. And to me personally, is more aesthetically pleasing than “dwarfs”. Who calls them wolfs? Gross.
Which is why mixing arts and social fights never work. To be clear, it's not like I despise the attitude of "influence a positive change" but... This isn't an example of it. People not knowing that this use of Man os neutral it's a problem with their education and reading ability. And I don't want to read worse prose because of "people"
funny enough, for me it depends on context. using "people" sounds so good when we are talking about an egalitarian or progressive speech, but "man" fits so much better when it's a noble and grandiose speech. "People of the land, unite!" "the hearts of men shall never falter!"
Actually he just made a translation, it was done before him. That said heade a very nice translation and had a great impact on observing the poem as literature, as most people at the time were busy debating it's value as a historical text
In the UK, it's still not uncommon to hear a group referred to as "men" regardless of the actual gender composition. This is especially true in millitary settings.
In English "man" is still genderless unless context specifically indicates otherwise. Any confusion is all down to the dumbing down of language, and the world in general, and I hate it!
@@user-ug5xr2gb6j This is even more prominent in gendered languages. If the gender is unknown, the masculine form is the default. Another example is how all it takes is one man in a group of mostly women to refer to the group as masculine, whereas a group of one woman among mostly men is still masculine.
@@user-ug5xr2gb6j in Brazil we speak Portuguese which is a language that comes from Latin like spanish, italian and french. We use the masculine words when we are referring to a collective form or a neutral form. There is currently a group that defends the use of neutral gender in language, because they understand that this way the language can be more inclusive for the LGBTQ+ cause.
Yes, but even as he used "men" even as he wrote the first drafts of the silmarillion, beren & luthien and children of hurin (which are all way older then lotr).It is theorised that he used it because the word "men" is of germanic origin (Professor Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon) unlike the word "human" wich has a latin origin.
That doesn't make sense though, if Tolkien used "man" to mean "human" not just "male adult human" why would "no man" refer to a woman? It would have to be some non-human being
that's interesting, having known man is gender neutral I always assumed Neil meant "One small step for me" down the ladder "and one giant leap for Humanity" walking on the moon.
He did mean to say "a man" though. I think this has been pretty much confirmed. It's still unclear if he just elided it or just forgot to say it or if the subtlety was dropped in transmission.
@@Musicrafter12I have listened to a text (from an ESL textbook though, so, the info might not be accurate, but it does seem credible as I've done a course on speech acoustics and analysing spectrograms) that said that some Australian guy analyzed the recording and found the "a" barely there, but it's not audible. So, perhaps it was so short that it was below the minimum length for audio perception (30-50 milliseconds)
Its important for Americans to defend the historical version if only to protect the correct readings of the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Sadly it's possible to run into those who insist that the authors meant "all males" not "all people" despite their extensive personal writing about the issue. [and ignoring the hypocrisy of the slave owners who helped write it]
To be fair to the authors, getting rid of slavery as soon as practicably posssible was the original plan outline. It actually happened in the northern states, then economics and greed stopped the implementation in the South.
Actually, they cribbed from Locke's 2nd treatise (he wrote life, liberty, and property). Locke had already seen this arguement and took time in his first treatise to say that men was used in the general sense of mankind. Most of the delegates would have been, at least passably, familiar with Locke's works (they quoted him...a lot).
@@Grey-Honey-Badgerthey changed the property line to pursuit of happiness so as to not support slavery as slaves were seen as property and if we had a right to property well you see the argument.
You cant stop me from using the words brotherhood and kings for all the genders!! The vibes that comes with "She is the third king. Who held the brotherhood of the paladins close to each beating heart in her chest." is too good!!
Its honestly weird English does use Queen for a female ruler. Most European Kingdoms do not. A King is a ruler of a realm. A Queen is the wife of a ruler. This is actually maintained a little even with the British monarchy. You cannot be the King to the Queen monarch. Only a Prince.
fun fact: the term "were" derives from common germanic "weraz" which, in turn, comes from the indoeuropean word "WIROS" which is the same root as the latin "vir" for "man".
Kinda fun how this germanic made it to english but basically died out in german, like we got Werwolf and Mann but Mann doesnt mean human but just a male person. Now i wonder where we found Mensch....😂
@@lara-chan7482 Probably, but I'm not sure, from the name "Mannus". In ancient germanic religions, humans weren't created by the gods, but by a creature named "Mannus" who, in turn, was created by "Twisto".
@@lara-chan7482 Also, "vir" in latin means a male human. You must also take in consideration that there were a lot of different roots to talk about the same thing, but with different shades of meaning. Like "Vir" and "Homo": the second is a general human being and the first a male human.
“Earthling” is an also good Anglo-Saxon term. Ironically “human” and “Adam” both derivate from “Being made of soil” Or put a foreword in noting “man” is gender neutral; which I’d recommend for historical or fantasy work to avoid anachronisms. But I’d probably call my dog a “beast” entirely complimentary so, YMMV
If I'm not mistaken human actually derives from the proto Indo European root that means something like "Beings from earth" as opposed to "Beings from the sky" (gods)
That makes sense that Adam means,"made of soil." According to the book of Genesis, God formed Adam,the first man, from the dust of the earth and breathed life into him.
Almost every race has nomenclature or common naming conventions that refers to the earth, or the dust of the earth, etc. Example: Chen for Chinese. Adam for English.
This video was so much better than I thought it would be. You had me at your pronunciation of wereman and wyfman. While I'm here I would just like to add the notion that if language is a popularity contest, we don't necessarily have to rally behind the winner. If a certain use of a word is changing, it may still be of value to preserve the older or lesser used meaning as well. We don't have to follow the herd with (perceived) changes, we are the creators. But I appreciate your keen work on preserving at least the history of words and their meanings!
It’s about immersion. Tolkien used “men” and many other old fashioned terms to create an ancient ambience. It is still appropriate depending on the setting the author wants to convey. It would not be appropriate to describe the world today, obviously, but that is not the business of high fantasy writers.
@@kathrineici9811 ah but being politically correct and being so bored you can do nothing but be mad about shite that doesn't matter is all the rage in this era
@@The_left_hand_pillar I didn't say it was. I said it gave an "ancient ambience." Regardless if it's ancient language or not, what's important is the impression the language gives on the reader, and in this case it helps create world that seems old and mythical. That was obviously Tolkien's intent and it worked.
@@tristintaylor7999nah we just need to reverse engineer an androgynous form to go with wereman and wifman. wutman is the funniest choice there but it’s probably not very good actually
Thank you for reminding me why I ended up calling our (female) dog 'weewoo' - it's a corruption of 'wywolf', which was my trying to be clever and coin a female form of 'werewolf' - I wonder if anyone else has ever bothered with that? Probably; if there's one thing fantasy authors love, it's doing nerd stuff with language
If the word existed in modern english it would be wifewolf. The reason it doesn't is because the word wif which became wife replaced bryd (bride) as the term for female spouse. Bride went on to mostly be used to refer to someone getting married like bridegroom is. There also used to be a female version of husband. In OE husbonda meant male head of household (lit housemaster) and husbonde meant female head of household (lit housemistress).
@@MannyBrum This is all true, and good information to point out, but - in defence of my take, consider that 'wife' phonemically ends in 'f' and 'wolf' begins with 'w'; the former may have assimilated to the latter's position and become indistinct in speech, turning 'fw' into 'ww' and then 'w'. Thence 'wywolf' - Though, the possibility of a historic 'fw' being confused with a 'qu' and the word becoming 'wickolf' or 'wiggelf' instead (as 'qu' merged with 'kw' and 'k', in most dialects, and medial voicing is not unusual) is also interesting. Or even a syllabic inversion to produce 'wigluff'/'wiglough'... though you'd have to be talking about werewolves and wifewolves a _lot_ to produce words _that_ heavily altered from the core lexicon. But in a fantasy world - you could have your wirrulps and wigloughs, just as easy as we have starboards and boatswains.
In french, which is very close to english in the terms of signification Men with a capital letter can be use to talk about the human and in a neutral gender kind of way but men with a small letter m is for the males. i think it's more intuitive
I believe Tolkien did that to specify humanity vs random male characters. I actually hear it capitalized when the Orc captain says the time of Men is over, it is the time of the Orc (OK, paraphrased, but you get what I mean. ) In the movie.
Meanwhile in German most nouns that denote people are generically masculine, making the language as it is used unjust... And shitty conservatives are hellbent on keeping it that way.
You must be enjoying the privilege of not knowing what it's like to feel disgust reading it, then. Because some of us hate never getting a break from consistent reminders of how sexism is still way too inescapable.
@@KxNOxUTAthis... This isnt about sexism? It's just language? Like, man in the term of humanity isn't even a gender thing. It's just the suffix that survived independently
Complaining about sexism in reference to a gender neutral term that the video already outlined has modifiers to make it gender specific… the brain rot is growing.
@@thomastakesatollforthedark2231 I recommend reading the book “Wordsl*t”-it deep dives into the English language and how sexism is pervasive throughout it, as well as the impact that this “men/male as default” has on people (girls/women especially). It *is* actually relevant and more than “just language.” It’s also just a great and fascinating read.
Same set as I have from my grandma! I love the goofy but technically more accurate than the movies pink and purple outfit Darrell Sweet made for Aragorn.
I bought that edition when I was in high school. I gave those books to my then girlfriend's son. Someone bought me the movie version and I got the version with the original design dust covers. There's no reason to think that she hasn't read them just because they are older than her. The used market is a great way to buy books.
I was introduced to the term “mankind” as a shorter version of “humankind”, so using “man/men” in a gender neutral fashion makes perfect sense to me in historical contexts (or historically performing fantasy) but I agree that it’s sadly not suitable in modern prose. Also, I’d be definitely weirded out if someone started calling me “wifman” out of the blue.
I don’t know that I’d say it’s not suitable. I think it depends on the audience. I wish our general population were all literate enough to be able to discern when man/men are used in a gender neutral context. The declaration independence for example was based on the writing of Locke who explicitly said that he used man to refer to both men and women.
Would be worse if someone misspelled the term when you show up somewhere and everyone expects you to know what the wifi password is. Because you're the wifi man 😁😁
It's actually the opposite. Humankind is derived from mankind. The Sanskrit word for us was "manu" which is also the name of the first person in the Hindu narrative. The Sanskrit word for males was "moz". In Latin homo means "the same" or "indivisible" and homo-manus is contracted to homanus, or more commonly "humanus" which can be interpreted as "people like us" or "different limbs of the same body". Refering to humanity at large as "men" isn't a euphemism. Refering to males as "men" is the euphemism.
I still think "the race of men" sounds way cooler than saying humans. Men as gender neutral has never bothered me. It is the default in French, so maybe that's why. But also, basic context makes it clear enough.
To be fair in french there is a clear difference between if you mean humanity or males. For males it's hommes / men, for humanity it's Hommes / Men. Of course you won't hear it, but if you read documents, it at least helps to clarify the intent of the author
you showed up on youtube short 00.48 after just getting home from the bar, i got a few bers in and no clue who you are but i do love you. wish you all the best.
I like the use of the term Men in LotR because it gave rise to the hilarious misunderstanding that no Man could kill the Witch-King when actually it was that no man could :D
@@lisahenry20 The Last March of the Ents was another 'take that' to Macbeth, as Tolkien thought that the prophecy of the forest marching against him meaning men with branches in their clothing was extremely lame and uninspired.
There's also the thing where Merry gets a magical anti-evil dagger and shanks the witch king with it. Merry not being a man either, but a hobbit. If only he'd given it to Legolas. He could probably jam it onto an arrow and 360 noscope that witch and save the world from a whole lot of bother.
Even better, the dagger your referring to would only has that effect on the witch king himself, it was forged for the war where he rose to power, and destroyed that kingdom. Hobbits are technically the last enclave that still technically acknowledge that old kingdom. Merry is, from a certain point of view, the last recruit of a forgotten war, carrying a dead kingdom's Fuck You Witch King
@@MrSMD-rr9xw Language does evolve? Please tell me that you're not contesting that. There's a reason different languages, dialects, accents, slang, etc. exist.
@@DrinkWater713 I can only assume that it's a trend everywhere but global literacy rates have been on the incline since Tolkien's time. People are just idiots
I don't think anyone old enough to process context clues would be confused by the way Tolkien uses "men," even if he's never heard the word used that way before.
It's not obvious at all, in fact this reads as a dog whistle. You want to say that only men matter and only men are human beings, but when confronted you're gonna be like "oh nooo I was being gender neutral trust meee" Well I don't trust you, your tricks wont work on me.
It's intentional confusion. There are studies indicating that people are more likely to imagine a man or not if the gender neutral "he" or "him" is used. For example, "If a student needs help, give it to him." Most people would assume the student is a boy, not that the sentence is meant for any student. The question I have is why the heck that matters.
I'll stay with the English I was taught. Until the late 90s men was still a gender neutral term in Australia, and I'll keep it going. Simplicity is still the easiest and best written solution.
Surely the simple thing is not having one word mean two similar but distinct things where there can be a chance of misunderstanding, intentional or accidental.
I am Australian, turned 50 in the 1990s. I do not recall ever encountering 'man' as a gender neutral term through my earlier life. See my earlier comment on student puns in the 1960s: 'Man is a mammal who suckles his young'. It's funny precisely because the word 'man' was not used inclusively to mean both sexes/genders!
Jerks also works fairly well as a gender neutral term. "In those days, the world was young, and the lands of Middle-earth were filled with many creatures. The Elves had their realms, and the Dwarves delved deep into the mountains. But above all these were the Jerks, who spread across the lands with a restless ambition"
As someone who loves language & accents. These are the things that I love. Going all the way back to PIE (Proto-Indo-European) its amazing how much has been kept for 10,000 years. Sometimes with exact spelling & use.
@@muma6559 You mean written history, right? Overall, it is true, that the further "in time" we go, the less we know. I'd argue languages are some of the best ways to study ancient cultures.
Technically lycanthrope is also gendered because the last part comes from anthrop which is that Greek root for man. By that logic a wifwolf would be a lycogyne.
@@SirPhysics As a bit of a linguistics nerd, I have to be annoying and correct you :3c "Anthro-" comes from the Greek word "ἄνθρωπος" (ánthropos), which means "human" or "person" and is gender-neutral. "Andro-" comes from the Greek word "ἀνήρ" (anér), with the genitive form "ἀνδρός" (andrós), which means "man" or "male." They are similar, so it's a fairly easy mistake to make. I think gendered versions of lycanthrope would probably be something like "Androlycanthrope" and "Gynolycanthrope", but I'm not super well versed in how Greek works. Hope I cleared things up :3 !!!!
The amount of times ive had to explain that the word "man" used to be gender nuetral even with glaring context clues in the text when having a discussion surprises me. Thank you for putting this info in a nice little short
@@Duck-wc9deLanguage is gendered in that sense. Man (singular) should not be used to reffer to woman, but the use and meaning of men can vary depending on the context. Saying pronouns are gendered isn't woke or anything, it's a linguistic fact.
@@Duck-wc9deSome English words have gender though. It can be because they keep the gender that they had in Old English or because they are borrowed from French.
@@askia8704 just because a word USED to be gendered in its base language doesn't mean that when English mugged that language and turned it's pockets for loose grammar and stole the word, that it is still gendered, pronouns are gendered obviously but English does not gender it's words though many other countries may thing we did because of words they recognize that we stole from their language
@@msh2193sure, but that's because Tolkien was originally trying to craft mythology, not simply writing a story and that was the common way to write such things in mythology. Yes, it'd be weird to write in such ways while trying to present something in a modern way, but it really shouldn't be confusing when it's clear that the context is ancient rather than modern.
As much as language evolves I feel it is up to those who know the true meaning of words to educate those who wish to use language to create hate and hardship. Also to be fair most people be dumb as rocks so no winning there either.... love your work ❤😊 keep the stories coming
"Man" is the multiple for human, "men" is the multiple for a male person. So if you're saying "humans are flawed" you'd say "Man is flawed" not "Men are flawed". Just a (major) pet peeve of mine 😅
actually "men" have always stood for both, both constructions really mean the same. I guess "Man is flawed" is slightly clearer for what you mean though
You're tripping over the use of singular to indicate something universal, abstract or figurative. Think of "the sofa is a part of the TV watching experience" vs "I own two sofas". 'Man' is _always_ singular, it's just that in the sentence you quote, the singular is correct.
I love the world building in that show! Really shows that the author has thought about it far more in-depth than the surface level scrapes most others do.
Well, I'm not weeb enough to know this, but I do know the language it was originally written in and I can tell you that is most definitely a thing pushed by the translators and not in the original source material nor the language. 人は人、それだけだ
I like that you brought this up. I saw an argument maybe two weeks ago claiming that Tolkien was racist for saying 'men' and not including women in the term. It was on twitter, so I argued back with way less words... but yeah. This is my new answer to that comment
With you on this 😉 (I thought it was very cool, when studying Spanish and French, that women get to use both 'theys' while the poor guys are stuck with one! 😂)
@@cmm5542as native spanish speaker, its upseting to be honest. Like yeah you are included but the sexist proffesor of the momment would always say that todos is not neutral but male (false, but most of us were not teached that). And then they would proceed to say as well: "If there's ONE male and 99 females you still have to use todos"... Which is not true, again, but you can guess how that makes feel every kid with the usage of the word (even boys).
A gendered word should not be used for both Ganders and make one gender invisible by doing so, that is disgusting to me. Your gender is not importent enough do be addressed or recognised, thanks people - ah men.
I feel this- I’m not bothered by “man” as a generalization for humans, and I actually like being in that part of the archaic language umbrella. Because of my faith background it’s not unusual to sometimes hear women included in the category of “brothers” or “sons” (which in the case of the latter, is an intentional statement of spiritual gender equality that was very counterculture in its day.) I don’t mind being included in group terms like “guys,” “boys,” or “lads” either… maybe it’s uncommon, but I guess I’m just very flexible with group labels like that.
@@LetTalesBeToldI think I understand you, and mostly agree. I too have been included, and as a christian, we are all brothers and sisters and mothers of his, as he said ;) But yes, and also guys is almost gender-neutral now... it just means people of the group. For me, for others, but sometimes it's more male oriented. It doesn't have to be exact, to be honest.
It was changed to no "one" back in the 1980s, because they understand that it needed to be more inclusive and respectful. There's no reason we can't do so today.
In today's world many are willfully ignorant of many things bc " it doesn't apply to me or my feelings so it's not true". When fact cares not for your emotions nor your personal life
That usage dominated in a time period when women were excluded from politics, work, and property, and were generally regarded as inferior. The fact that the same word that means "man" also meant "human" in that time isn't exactly an innocent quirk of etymology.
Yes, any people don’t understand that grammatically speaking the term isn’t necessarily reduced to masculine. English is a language that has non-gendered terms, in comparison to something like Spanish practically everything is gendered and something like “gender neutral” would sound like gibberish because it doesn’t exist.
On recent years, people have tried to implement gender neutral terms in Spanish, and it for sure has come under a lot of criticism for "being a distortion of language". I don't have a strong opinion on it, so for the moment I think it's fine to use it for individual non-binary people
English has some gender specific terms, especially in spelling… and every damn one came from French, except for King and Queen, those came from the changes in pronunciation of the Anglo-Saxon “Cyang”.
I read a poem once that went approximately: There are words that are called too incorrect, And others deemed not deft, That carried to their sterile end, there would be no language left.
What else is the lady gonna get paid to do? There have always been short sighted people like her. The problem is that our society holds them up on a pedestal. Also, those SSRI eyes. They have that look that gives me the heebie-jeebies everytime.
If you add to that, that language today among the newborns is nothing but incoherent slang that sounds like garbage being dragged through the street then that saying is absolutely correct.
Makes sense. As “men” is plural it makes you think of multiple individuals instead of a collective. On an individual basis the gender connotation of man/men is much more pervasive.
@@vainpiers useful with a regular speech, less useful for story writing. When you’re dealing with not just humans but elves, vampires, aliens, etc. the term people can be pretty vague and lead to confusion
This woman is pretty far out there. Men was gender neutral all the way through the 20th century. Languages drift enough by themselves. We do not need eggheads forcing the process to win political arguments.
Growing up I was taught that the masculine term encompassed the feminine, so something like "men" would be inclusive of both men and women. However, as society continues to advance toward more and more equality what I'm seeing is the desire to break away from that encompassing. It's a desire to assert independence and equality by demanding a term used to denote a single gender no longer also be used to denote the whole.
Just in case this video somehow didn't prompt this thought in any of you: Man - men Woman - women (The same is true for fireman, postman, etc) Human - humans English is once again making complete sense in every way
Its interesting to me how different people or groups of people use language differently for example I am 27 years old and in my growing up and education using men in the way you describe is one of the ways I use the word and was taught to use it I run into very few who assume I am talking about men alone. I have noted that most people that assume that are people that come from cities and urban areas where as people that use men as a general term come from Rural or working class backgrounds. this is of course not always true but it seems to broadly hold.
1st video of yours I've seen! 1 - absolutely adore,100% here for linguistics, instantly subscribed. 2 - how exciting to randomly have your video pop up just a few days after I finished your Daindreth series!!! I had no idea you even made videos!!
Unless you want to sound like the Bible, are we sure that isnt what Tolkien wanted? It’s basically the Bible of fantasy. I’m willing to roll the dice on that one.
Of course Tolkien wrote in a deliberately archaic voice. Elisabeth didn't say not to do it. She said not to do it if you don't want to sound archaic. If you do, go for it; there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
It doesn’t help that a lot of the ostensibly gender neutral uses of the word ‘men’ were made when, men were treated as the default, so authors probably mostly had men in mind, even if they weren’t consciously excluding women. In the bible, for example, instructions are aimed at men by default.
I happen to think that the reason most people nowadays think 'men were treated as the default' is simply because they are not AWARE 'men' was used gender-neutrally. Because there is really no other historical evidence of it. If you recognize 'men' was being used neutrally by our ancestors, then women were always included equally. It's only because MODERNS think 'men' means 'only males,' that history can be seen as 'default male.' Which doesn't make sense anyway since women were involved in EVERY historical social achievement of humanity. (More women than men have been Christians since the earliest church - hardly likely if the Bible were actually aimed at men. I was written in Greek, and 'anthropos' is ALSO gender-neutral). I don't think our ancestors were ignorant of what was right in front of them; I think we have just forgotten it.
One example of many that's still sometimes used is the phrase "man and wife" rather than "husband and wife." The former assumes the man as the default person while the wife is the add-on and possession/property. It'd be like saying "I now pronounce you woman and husband." At least "husband and wife" names the counterparts on equal standing.
It's not using men as "defualt" just using men as supiriors. when talking about, or calling upon a race of people, you are speaking about/to the leaders, and military of that race. Something that has always been in every culture on earth male dominated.
It still can be gender neutral and most people don't assume you're using it in a masculine sense if used in the context of describing an entire group or race.
In Dutch, we still use the exact word 'men' to describe a generalized group of humans. 'Men kan op zondag naar de kerk te gaan' = 'People of both genders can go to church on sunday'.
In Afrikaans - descended from 17th century Dutch - the words for a male and a human are morphologically entirely seperate. Man is the singular for a male, manne is the plural, and mens is the singular for human, with mense the plural. As for females, vrou is the singular, and either vroue or vrouens (less popular) are the plural. In fact, we even have compounds of them often used when complaining about men or women in general. In that case a man (literally male human) is mansmens, and a woman (literally female human) is vroumens.
Same for Dutch: mens, vrouw and man for human/person, woman and man. De mens, or de mensheid translates to men/humanity. The Dutch word men means they or one. Men wil - they want, men kan - one could.
How is it neutral? That's implying that male is she default and female is an afterthought, which is pretty much the issue with gendered words in all western language
"Ils" and "elles" are about grammatical gender, not whether things are male or female. Most of the nouns they apply to have nothing like a sex, and most that do are all grouped as masculine or feminine regardless of their actual sex.
It's been fairly recently decided, by a relative minority, that it is archaic. Which is not how language USUALLY evolves, but whatever. I have no objections whatsoever to 'sounding like the King James Bible.' The most beautiful prose ever written (sorry Shakespeare, you take second billing 😁)
The discourse around the King James Bible is why I think the gender neutral usage is archaic. I’m an elder millennial and in my lifetime I’ve seen the discourse go from, “We don’t need gender neutral translations of the Bible because everyone knows ‘man’ includes women,” to, “Gender neutral translations pervert the Bible because ‘man’ means [cis-]men only.”
@@digitaljanus I personally believe the terms woman and female are achaic. They always have felt so. Why must they include the words man and male? We need new terms.
Catering to others ignorance helps to perpetuate it. Books should challenge one in many ways: vocabulary, philosophy, and religion at the least. Many in our time struggle to read and understand things from even two hundred years ago such as the Federalist Papers -- a series of newspaper articles intended for common consumption. As a people its important that we be able to understand the thoughts of past generations.
I love that you can have this neutral, factual discussion about this without getting offended like so many people do. And great historical context! (Also love that you didn’t insult Tolkien, that’s way too trendy these days).
The word nerdiness is much appreciated. And I agree, at present, 'men' doesn't work to describe all of humanity. We shouldn't edit past works that use it in a gender neutral way, since we should understand it didn't always mean just males. Just like we should understand old songs that use the word 'gay' aren't referring exclusively to same-sex oriented people. It took on the meaning of being free-spirited and disinclined to wait until marriage for sexual activity. The Gay 90's. Gay Paree. It included the people we now describe as gay, but wasn't exclusive to them. But later, when attitudes towards sex before marriage loosened a bit, it seemed redundant, since everybody was a bit gay that way. Men who liked other men were not allowed to marry, so they had to be 'gay', and liked the mouthfeel of that word--would you want to be described as 'homosexual'? Five syllables. They also helpfully gave us the one-syllable term 'straight' (and the somewhat insulting descriptive term 'breeders') for heterosexuals, since that's even more of a mouthful. Gay and Straight works, neither is insulting, and anybody with an ounce of blood in him/her can feel 'gay' sometimes. In the old way. ;)
And even before 'Gay Paree,' the word could simply mean 'merry and bright' without any sexual connotations! I remember a scene in an old film where a headwaiter is describing the recipe for his famous salad: 'You must slice the onion very thin . . . It gives the salad flavour; it makes it bright, refreshing, and gay.' Language does indeed change all the time!
@@cmm5542 That's from Easter Parade. The headwaiter who behaved so impeccably when chatty customers took up his time, then didn't order anything was played by the wonderful Jules Munshin. Who was gay in the older sense only. But bear in mind, MGM's musical production of teh time was crammed to the gills with gay guys--in the newer sense of 'gay'. So much of the best talent in that field was composed of gay men. So there'd be a lot of injokes--remember how popular Cole Porter was then, and on some level, everybody knew about him. And didn't care, so long as he didn't come out and say it. The word was transitioning by then. Hmm. Transitioning is another word that's transitioning these days. Another example would be This Heart of Mine, a song written for the film Ziegfield Follies, which Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer danced to. "And then quite suddenly I saw you and I dreamed of gay amours"--the setting of the number is clearly back in the era when 'gay' meant "out for a good time" regardless of orientation. However, that was produced by Arthur Freed's unit, which was, as mentioned, full of gay men (Freed is cedited as having written the lyrics, but many suspect he didn't). The incredibly beautiful orchestation was by Conrad Salinger, who effectively created the MGM orchestral sound--and who was in private life, gay in the sense of attracted to men. Not at all in the sense of being light-hearted and merry. His death in his early 60's is believed by many to have been suicide. Many who used the word in popular songs at the time, whether they were homosexual or not, used it with an awareness that it could mean several things, one of which the general public knew about, but didn't want to acknowlege openly. It's damned interesting. Btw, have you ever seen the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Bunny Hugged"? You know, the one with Ravishing Ronald. People knew what was going on. Whether they said so or not. ;)
@@christopherlyons5900I like reading your posts. They're always so full of nuanced information that either I didn't know or felt like I was the only one who did! 🙂 I haven't seen that cartoon, but I know what you mean about Old Hollywood. There's actually something quite - confidential? - in presenting something in a way that everyone knows what you mean without coming right out and saying it. You feel like you're all in on a secret 😆
Didn't even Tolkien play with this men is men and men is human. I mean the prophecy about the Witch king can't be killed by any man, sounds like no human can kill him. But than a woman does it. Maybe in English it's not as clear (I read mainly the German translation, just once in English)
If I remember correctly: In the English version, when referring to humans in general, he capitalized the first letter (“Man”). But the prophecy was written with the letter un-capitalized (“man”), denoting a human male. Capitalization rules in English don’t translate over too accurately in German 🤷🏼♂️
I’m so used to the wording in the Bible that I never batted an eye at it 😂 I guess it would mostly be readers of older texts you wouldn’t get confused… thanks for the history, that’s super cool! I wonder if there’s any newer translations of the Bible that uses “humans” instead.
I believe NASB does the gender neutral terms when possible, but I could be wrong. And I do personally like the significance of “sons” in reference to the family of God because it’s a statement of inheritance. Women were rarely household heirs in the contemporary culture of the New Testament, so calling the whole collective of believers “sons” was a great statement of spiritual gender equality in the inheritance of all believers. 😊
@@LetTalesBeToldAny idea why? Have you ever thought about the introduction of the woman who was made especially for the man? Don't be swayed by any text that caters to the false teachings that are the opposite of your very correct feeling. HTH
@@LetTalesBeToldYes, I feel the same way. I mean, when I was a kid I didn't quite understand the significance of it, but as I got older I began to realize what a big deal it was that I got to be a 'son,' too!
If I am burdened to chose between minimizing my vocabulary to placate the dullard, or to speak freely, I shall always chose the later and find myself in company of higher quality rather than of greater quantity.
The 2010s in a nutshell- people pretending social debates are over and settled when they completely aren't and there's a lot more gray area than the self proclaimed victors of these debates would have you believe
The Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary makes no mention of a "wereman", which would be a tautology, since both "wer" and "man" mean roughly the same thing. Etymology is fascinating, but you should beware of misinformation used to peddle specific agenda.
BRING WEREMAN BACK! Every full moon some guy becomes a dude.
You have made my day with this comment
Behold! I am now another, different guy! Gaze upon me in fear!
Dudebro unleashed
This has my vote!
@@vincentsperling4262 read that in the voice of dr Doofenshmirtz
So, by that logic female werewolves should be called "wifwolves"
Edit: a lot of people have corrected me on the below, that the wife in midwife refers to the person giving birth, not the person supporting them through that.
And male midwives should be midweres
Or Wowolves, if it underwent the same vowel shift.
@@benlowe1701 And their pack leader is called Moon Moon
@@Albinojackrussel no, because it's a common misconception that 'wife' in midwife is referring to the gender of the midwife (so common that historically, especially in the 18th century, there was such a thing as a 'man midwife', a term for male [proto-]obstetricians, who sometimes weren't viewed as, or qualified as, doctors in other areas of medicine, though they very often also could be) - 'mid' means with, so midwife is 'with woman', so the person (often woman, but not necessarily) who is 'with' a woman to assist her in labour and giving birth.
(Which suggests that a midwere, if such a thing existed, would probably be somebody who is with, and supports, a man during some difficult, possibly medical but not necessarily because I don't think there is anything really comparable, experience.
ETA: or there isn't for cis men, at least, because as @ragnkja points out, those assisting trans men 'seahorse dads' in labour, when such cases have occurred and do so in future, can arguably, and perhaps should, be called midweres.)
(But I don't know if it'd catch on. If only in as much as people very commonly do think it's about the gender of the medical person, to the point we even now have the term 'male midwife' because women are assumed so much to be the default for the job, so I don't think people would think to alter the term based on the gender of the patient, even if, based on the original Old English etymology, it would be more 'correct' to do so. But the thing is that language shifts and changes, and we've naturally come a long way since Old English, so even though it is true that midwife is etymologically 'with woman' and originally about the gender of the person undergoing labour, not the one providing care, at this point, in modern English, it pretty much just means the qualified medical professional performing that role for somebody, regardless of the patient's gender and, used properly and/or in circumstances where it isn't necessary to specify [use 'male midwife'] for extenuating reasons, also regardless of the caregiver's gender. And of course the meaning and usage could shift again, but it's become very entrenched by this point.)
@@Albinojackrussel
No, the “wife” in the word “midwife” is the one giving birth, and the midwife is the person who is _with_ her. A midwere is someone who helps out when a trans man gives birth.
I also recently learned that the word "girl" used to also be a gender neutral term for a child or youngster, and sex/gender was indicated with an additional term, "knave girl" for a male child, and "gay girl" for a female child.
today I learned that calling someone a "knave" was just an old way of calling them immature
call me gay gay girl girl cause im probably using the term in a grammatically incorrect manner
Wow, never would have thought girl was gender neutral but looked up the etymology and your right.
Nowadays "gay girl" is used to describe people such as me😊
@@asprinjuice425 and me
I don’t think people would assume “men” means “males” in a purposefully archaic/sounding fantasy, though. Context matters.
Lol check out Warhammer shit written in a weird old school fashion 40 years ago. Ppl have a lot of trouble
@@whydidyoutubeaddthisBut Tolkien was actually very well read. It’s not his fault if his readers are stupid.
You'd think, but tons of people still think that even Tolkien and the Bible are specifically referring to males when men is used to mean humans generally.
@@g.e.causey Who, though? That doesn’t feel true to me. I don’t have sources to cite, of course, but neither do you. I feel like it would take some pretty advanced illiteracy to read that incorrectly.
@@alirubaii4839 I can only say that I've seen it happen. Calling it advanced illiteracy seems rather unkind, and I don't really see how it's so unbelievable. Not everyone is a native English speaker, and even among native speakers not everyone has been taught how to read old fashioned writing or knows all of the ways in which language has evolved over time, and ignorance is only a personal failing when it is willful.
Not only a professor, also wrote a part of the dictionary and is the reason we now write it as dwarves instead of dwarfs
I always spell it dwarfs in my own writing because I believe English should be more regular and simple. I'm less concerned with indicating where it came from or how it entered English.
We use both depending on where you live because his entry in the dictionary and his own writing are different.
@@InnerProp Yes, he realized after the fact that he should have used dwarfs, but he was kinda stuck.
@@InnerProp - Irregularities are a natural part of every language. Adding irregularities where none previously existed, so as to match other similar words is also a natural part of evolution. Ergo, it doesn’t really matter “where a word came from”, only what a plurality of speakers agrees too.
Wanting English to be “regular and simple” is a very prescriptivist mindset, no different than those who are adamant about etymological origins. Like the “octopuses/octopi” argument. The former emphasizes origin, the latter matches with similar words (“cacti”).
As things stand, dwarves is the most commonly accepted spelling. And to me personally, is more aesthetically pleasing than “dwarfs”. Who calls them wolfs? Gross.
giga chad move changing it to Dwarves
We've been doing a disservice to wifwolfs all this time.
I know of a place that is dedicated specifically to them.
Does this mean all wiffle bats are grammatically female
@@stanleyjarman7706they are now
Wife wolves.... need
4chan /trash/ wifwolf monthly thread
I still do. "...within the hearts of man," is so much more phonetically gravitational than "....within the hearts of people,"
I imagine its also in regards to the word "human", Man just being the shortened version.
Which is why mixing arts and social fights never work.
To be clear, it's not like I despise the attitude of "influence a positive change" but... This isn't an example of it.
People not knowing that this use of Man os neutral it's a problem with their education and reading ability. And I don't want to read worse prose because of "people"
@@lorenzomeulli750I agree, creativity and censorship, even self-censorship, don’t mingle well
funny enough, for me it depends on context. using "people" sounds so good when we are talking about an egalitarian or progressive speech, but "man" fits so much better when it's a noble and grandiose speech.
"People of the land, unite!"
"the hearts of men shall never falter!"
There are many instances where men can be used as a group of people, genders both included, yes even today, in english and other languages
Let us not forget that Tolkien is the person who translated Beowolf into English as well.
Actually he just made a translation, it was done before him. That said heade a very nice translation and had a great impact on observing the poem as literature, as most people at the time were busy debating it's value as a historical text
He wasn't THE person who translated it. He just contributed a translation of his own as many others did before and since.
he a bum
Not to be "that guy," but Beowulf was originally written in English. Old English, but very definitely still English.
You should check out his translation of "The Wanderer"
In the UK, it's still not uncommon to hear a group referred to as "men" regardless of the actual gender composition. This is especially true in millitary settings.
In English "man" is still genderless unless context specifically indicates otherwise. Any confusion is all down to the dumbing down of language, and the world in general, and I hate it!
Same for the US. Maybe it's different in Gen Z, but anyone millennial or older is aware of "men" as an alternative for "humans"
Same in Portugal, funny enough, but we do not have gender neutral in our language in general, so Men with capital letter is mankind
@@RamikinHordeit’s the same for gen z maybe alphas making it a problem😂
@@RamikinHorde- Don't lump us into it now, I've known it's broader use for all people all my life.
We still use men as gender neutral is certain context. And it's rather clear when we do it
It’s interesting in English that most masculine words are also used as the collective/neutral where there is a specific word for the feminine.
@@user-ug5xr2gb6j This is even more prominent in gendered languages. If the gender is unknown, the masculine form is the default. Another example is how all it takes is one man in a group of mostly women to refer to the group as masculine, whereas a group of one woman among mostly men is still masculine.
@@lurategh Hadn’t thought about that but it’s true, especially in romance languages.
Well, it's clear to us, but I've noticed that a LOT of people don't actually understand.
@@user-ug5xr2gb6j in Brazil we speak Portuguese which is a language that comes from Latin like spanish, italian and french.
We use the masculine words when we are referring to a collective form or a neutral form. There is currently a group that defends the use of neutral gender in language, because they understand that this way the language can be more inclusive for the LGBTQ+ cause.
He probably also really wanted the prophecy/pun of "no man shall kill him" work better 😉
Yes, but even as he used "men" even as he wrote the first drafts of the silmarillion, beren & luthien and children of hurin (which are all way older then lotr).It is theorised that he used it because the word "men" is of germanic origin (Professor Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon) unlike the word "human" wich has a latin origin.
Thats was a Macbeth rewritte
In the books, Eowyn doesn't kill the Witch-King. That was Merry who did, Jackson just decided to give Eowyn some extra girlboss juice.
That doesn't make sense though, if Tolkien used "man" to mean "human" not just "male adult human" why would "no man" refer to a woman? It would have to be some non-human being
@@sskpsp Yeah, it's a Jackson thing. She didn't kill him in the book, Merry did.
I don't know why this showed up in my algorithm, but I'm glad it did. This was really neat and fun to learn.
If he hadn’t used ‘men’ to refer to humanity, the ‘I am no man’ moment wouldn’t have been possible.
it was both a play on gendered words, and marked Merry's part, as the Hobbit helped to finish off the Witch King
Wasn't she an elf?
@@noahtackett6264 Eowin was a princess of Rohan, human kingdom
@@noahtackett6264 Are you referring to Eowyn, Shield Maiden of Rohan, or Meriadoc Brandybuck of the Shire?
Men include women.
It’s why “one small step for man” is grammatically correct, Armstrong was saying that it was physically a small step for a human to make
that's interesting, having known man is gender neutral I always assumed Neil meant "One small step for me" down the ladder "and one giant leap for Humanity" walking on the moon.
Apparently there's supposed to be an "a" in there that just isn't audible. One small step for a man, Neil Armstrong, is one giant leap for mankind.
He did mean to say "a man" though. I think this has been pretty much confirmed. It's still unclear if he just elided it or just forgot to say it or if the subtlety was dropped in transmission.
@@Musicrafter12I have listened to a text (from an ESL textbook though, so, the info might not be accurate, but it does seem credible as I've done a course on speech acoustics and analysing spectrograms) that said that some Australian guy analyzed the recording and found the "a" barely there, but it's not audible. So, perhaps it was so short that it was below the minimum length for audio perception (30-50 milliseconds)
Plus it wasn't a very big step that he, a man, took. So either way.
Its important for Americans to defend the historical version if only to protect the correct readings of the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Sadly it's possible to run into those who insist that the authors meant "all males" not "all people" despite their extensive personal writing about the issue. [and ignoring the hypocrisy of the slave owners who helped write it]
To be fair to the authors, getting rid of slavery as soon as practicably posssible was the original plan outline. It actually happened in the northern states, then economics and greed stopped the implementation in the South.
Actually, they cribbed from Locke's 2nd treatise (he wrote life, liberty, and property). Locke had already seen this arguement and took time in his first treatise to say that men was used in the general sense of mankind. Most of the delegates would have been, at least passably, familiar with Locke's works (they quoted him...a lot).
@@Grey-Honey-BadgerYes, that's a good point!
YES! F MOST PEOPLE, THEY SHOULD LEARN MENEANS HUMANITY!!
@@Grey-Honey-Badgerthey changed the property line to pursuit of happiness so as to not support slavery as slaves were seen as property and if we had a right to property well you see the argument.
You cant stop me from using the words brotherhood and kings for all the genders!! The vibes that comes with "She is the third king. Who held the brotherhood of the paladins close to each beating heart in her chest." is too good!!
Its honestly weird English does use Queen for a female ruler. Most European Kingdoms do not. A King is a ruler of a realm. A Queen is the wife of a ruler.
This is actually maintained a little even with the British monarchy. You cannot be the King to the Queen monarch. Only a Prince.
It's because you are sexist and don't respect women.
@@fearedjames No, that would be a King Consort.
fun fact: the term "were" derives from common germanic "weraz" which, in turn, comes from the indoeuropean word "WIROS" which is the same root as the latin "vir" for "man".
Kinda fun how this germanic made it to english but basically died out in german, like we got Werwolf and Mann but Mann doesnt mean human but just a male person.
Now i wonder where we found Mensch....😂
@@lara-chan7482 Probably, but I'm not sure, from the name "Mannus". In ancient germanic religions, humans weren't created by the gods, but by a creature named "Mannus" who, in turn, was created by "Twisto".
@@lara-chan7482 Also, "vir" in latin means a male human. You must also take in consideration that there were a lot of different roots to talk about the same thing, but with different shades of meaning. Like "Vir" and "Homo": the second is a general human being and the first a male human.
@@lara-chan7482 actually, there is 'man' in German, which is gender neutral ('Man freut sich...'). I wonder if it's related to 'jemand'
@@lara-chan7482 We also have wer in the sense of 'who'
Something something 'hlæfdige' = "bread-kneader" (lady) and 'hlafweard' = "bread-protector" (lord).
Bread 🤗
Yes! I remember this from school!
Loafward, lol
I love bread
😂 ''Bread is Power''
In 3024 they will reconstruct it into something like “So loaf became fudge
“Earthling” is an also good Anglo-Saxon term. Ironically “human” and “Adam” both derivate from “Being made of soil”
Or put a foreword in noting “man” is gender neutral; which I’d recommend for historical or fantasy work to avoid anachronisms. But I’d probably call my dog a “beast” entirely complimentary so, YMMV
If I'm not mistaken human actually derives from the proto Indo European root that means something like "Beings from earth" as opposed to "Beings from the sky" (gods)
@@Gab8rielOooh, that is cool!
That makes sense that Adam means,"made of soil."
According to the book of Genesis, God formed Adam,the first man, from the dust of the earth and breathed life into him.
Almost every race has nomenclature or common naming conventions that refers to the earth, or the dust of the earth, etc.
Example: Chen for Chinese. Adam for English.
and “earth” also sounds like it's a cognate with its Semitic counterpart (esp Arabic)
This video was so much better than I thought it would be. You had me at your pronunciation of wereman and wyfman.
While I'm here I would just like to add the notion that if language is a popularity contest, we don't necessarily have to rally behind the winner. If a certain use of a word is changing, it may still be of value to preserve the older or lesser used meaning as well. We don't have to follow the herd with (perceived) changes, we are the creators.
But I appreciate your keen work on preserving at least the history of words and their meanings!
It’s about immersion. Tolkien used “men” and many other old fashioned terms to create an ancient ambience. It is still appropriate depending on the setting the author wants to convey. It would not be appropriate to describe the world today, obviously, but that is not the business of high fantasy writers.
It could be ised today if we could live a little and stop with the corporate-speak
@@kathrineici9811 ah but being politically correct and being so bored you can do nothing but be mad about shite that doesn't matter is all the rage in this era
@@The_left_hand_pillar I didn't say it was. I said it gave an "ancient ambience." Regardless if it's ancient language or not, what's important is the impression the language gives on the reader, and in this case it helps create world that seems old and mythical. That was obviously Tolkien's intent and it worked.
@@tristintaylor7999nah we just need to reverse engineer an androgynous form to go with wereman and wifman. wutman is the funniest choice there but it’s probably not very good actually
Thank you for reminding me why I ended up calling our (female) dog 'weewoo' - it's a corruption of 'wywolf', which was my trying to be clever and coin a female form of 'werewolf' - I wonder if anyone else has ever bothered with that? Probably; if there's one thing fantasy authors love, it's doing nerd stuff with language
That name is cute, and the story makes it cuter
Well, around my house the word "weewoo" is a word for a dude's peepee.
Would make for a very confused Police dog - especially in UK
If the word existed in modern english it would be wifewolf. The reason it doesn't is because the word wif which became wife replaced bryd (bride) as the term for female spouse. Bride went on to mostly be used to refer to someone getting married like bridegroom is. There also used to be a female version of husband. In OE husbonda meant male head of household (lit housemaster) and husbonde meant female head of household (lit housemistress).
@@MannyBrum This is all true, and good information to point out, but - in defence of my take, consider that 'wife' phonemically ends in 'f' and 'wolf' begins with 'w'; the former may have assimilated to the latter's position and become indistinct in speech, turning 'fw' into 'ww' and then 'w'. Thence 'wywolf' -
Though, the possibility of a historic 'fw' being confused with a 'qu' and the word becoming 'wickolf' or 'wiggelf' instead (as 'qu' merged with 'kw' and 'k', in most dialects, and medial voicing is not unusual) is also interesting. Or even a syllabic inversion to produce 'wigluff'/'wiglough'... though you'd have to be talking about werewolves and wifewolves a _lot_ to produce words _that_ heavily altered from the core lexicon. But in a fantasy world - you could have your wirrulps and wigloughs, just as easy as we have starboards and boatswains.
In french, which is very close to english in the terms of signification Men with a capital letter can be use to talk about the human and in a neutral gender kind of way but men with a small letter m is for the males. i think it's more intuitive
Which is weird because the terms for male humans and regular humans look nothing alike. Why did we drop vir for males ? We should bring it back
I believe Tolkien did that to specify humanity vs random male characters. I actually hear it capitalized when the Orc captain says the time of Men is over, it is the time of the Orc (OK, paraphrased, but you get what I mean. ) In the movie.
L'Homme un homme l'humain 🎉
Meanwhile in German most nouns that denote people are generically masculine, making the language as it is used unjust... And shitty conservatives are hellbent on keeping it that way.
I like to use "man" because it's very easy to distinguish between "humanity" and an actual man based on the context.
You must be enjoying the privilege of not knowing what it's like to feel disgust reading it, then. Because some of us hate never getting a break from consistent reminders of how sexism is still way too inescapable.
@@KxNOxUTAthis... This isnt about sexism? It's just language?
Like, man in the term of humanity isn't even a gender thing. It's just the suffix that survived independently
Complaining about sexism in reference to a gender neutral term that the video already outlined has modifiers to make it gender specific… the brain rot is growing.
@@thomastakesatollforthedark2231 Imagine getting angry at a LANGUAGE because it dosent comply with your ideology
@@thomastakesatollforthedark2231 I recommend reading the book “Wordsl*t”-it deep dives into the English language and how sexism is pervasive throughout it, as well as the impact that this “men/male as default” has on people (girls/women especially). It *is* actually relevant and more than “just language.”
It’s also just a great and fascinating read.
I love how well-used your copies of the books look. One can tell how much you loved the series from the amount of wear and tear on the spines.
Same set as I have from my grandma! I love the goofy but technically more accurate than the movies pink and purple outfit Darrell Sweet made for Aragorn.
Seeing as how old those copies actually are, I doubt she was the only owner to read those.
She might be a librarian 😂
I bought that edition when I was in high school. I gave those books to my then girlfriend's son. Someone bought me the movie version and I got the version with the original design dust covers. There's no reason to think that she hasn't read them just because they are older than her. The used market is a great way to buy books.
I was introduced to the term “mankind” as a shorter version of “humankind”, so using “man/men” in a gender neutral fashion makes perfect sense to me in historical contexts (or historically performing fantasy) but I agree that it’s sadly not suitable in modern prose. Also, I’d be definitely weirded out if someone started calling me “wifman” out of the blue.
I don’t know that I’d say it’s not suitable. I think it depends on the audience. I wish our general population were all literate enough to be able to discern when man/men are used in a gender neutral context. The declaration independence for example was based on the writing of Locke who explicitly said that he used man to refer to both men and women.
Would be worse if someone misspelled the term when you show up somewhere and everyone expects you to know what the wifi password is. Because you're the wifi man 😁😁
It's actually the opposite. Humankind is derived from mankind.
The Sanskrit word for us was "manu" which is also the name of the first person in the Hindu narrative. The Sanskrit word for males was "moz".
In Latin homo means "the same" or "indivisible" and homo-manus is contracted to homanus, or more commonly "humanus" which can be interpreted as "people like us" or "different limbs of the same body".
Refering to humanity at large as "men" isn't a euphemism. Refering to males as "men" is the euphemism.
I still think "the race of men" sounds way cooler than saying humans. Men as gender neutral has never bothered me. It is the default in French, so maybe that's why. But also, basic context makes it clear enough.
To be fair in french there is a clear difference between if you mean humanity or males. For males it's hommes / men, for humanity it's Hommes / Men. Of course you won't hear it, but if you read documents, it at least helps to clarify the intent of the author
@@docomega7862 Or, again, just basic context, which is what's used for the non-written version.
you showed up on youtube short 00.48 after just getting home from the bar, i got a few bers in and no clue who you are but i do love you. wish you all the best.
I like the use of the term Men in LotR because it gave rise to the hilarious misunderstanding that no Man could kill the Witch-King when actually it was that no man could :D
And wasn't that because Tolkien was disappointed by the missed opportunity in Macbeth?
@@lisahenry20 The Last March of the Ents was another 'take that' to Macbeth, as Tolkien thought that the prophecy of the forest marching against him meaning men with branches in their clothing was extremely lame and uninspired.
There's also the thing where Merry gets a magical anti-evil dagger and shanks the witch king with it. Merry not being a man either, but a hobbit.
If only he'd given it to Legolas. He could probably jam it onto an arrow and 360 noscope that witch and save the world from a whole lot of bother.
Merry helped too, so the Witch-King was killed by a non-Man man and a non-man Man
Even better, the dagger your referring to would only has that effect on the witch king himself, it was forged for the war where he rose to power, and destroyed that kingdom. Hobbits are technically the last enclave that still technically acknowledge that old kingdom. Merry is, from a certain point of view, the last recruit of a forgotten war, carrying a dead kingdom's Fuck You Witch King
Tolkien was a linguist and expected readers to have a certain command of the english language.
Which is getting harder to see with each passing year
And she claims that language is evolving lmfao
@@MrSMD-rr9xw Language does evolve? Please tell me that you're not contesting that. There's a reason different languages, dialects, accents, slang, etc. exist.
@@VXochitlhis argument is that people have less knowledge of language now. I am inclined to agree every time I read the comment section.
@@DrinkWater713 I can only assume that it's a trend everywhere but global literacy rates have been on the incline since Tolkien's time. People are just idiots
I don't think anyone old enough to process context clues would be confused by the way Tolkien uses "men," even if he's never heard the word used that way before.
Normal english speakers can easily understand. Only gender studies students who are obsessed with changing languages take issue with it.
@@anon2752 yeah
@anon2752 "gender studies students" aka 99% percent of women and anyone who isn't a misogynist like you actually cares about it.
It's not obvious at all, in fact this reads as a dog whistle.
You want to say that only men matter and only men are human beings, but when confronted you're gonna be like "oh nooo I was being gender neutral trust meee"
Well I don't trust you, your tricks wont work on me.
It's intentional confusion. There are studies indicating that people are more likely to imagine a man or not if the gender neutral "he" or "him" is used. For example, "If a student needs help, give it to him." Most people would assume the student is a boy, not that the sentence is meant for any student. The question I have is why the heck that matters.
capitalizing Men and Man to make it a proper noun is a good way to clarify you mean the "race of Men" in a fantasy context
I'll stay with the English I was taught. Until the late 90s men was still a gender neutral term in Australia, and I'll keep it going. Simplicity is still the easiest and best written solution.
That's cool. Sometimes books sound cool when they sound like the King James Bible. The Bible itself is pretty rad honestly I can see the draw in it
How do you collectively refer to men then? You still say "men"?
@@aouyiu I personally say "sup women" to refer to men. It sounds more like weremen which is more historically accurate.
Surely the simple thing is not having one word mean two similar but distinct things where there can be a chance of misunderstanding, intentional or accidental.
I am Australian, turned 50 in the 1990s. I do not recall ever encountering 'man' as a gender neutral term through my earlier life. See my earlier comment on student puns in the 1960s: 'Man is a mammal who suckles his young'. It's funny precisely because the word 'man' was not used inclusively to mean both sexes/genders!
Jerks also works fairly well as a gender neutral term.
"In those days, the world was young, and the lands of Middle-earth were filled with many creatures. The Elves had their realms, and the Dwarves delved deep into the mountains. But above all these were the Jerks, who spread across the lands with a restless ambition"
😆
"Above all these were the gender non-conforming unspecific homo-sapien-sapien bipedal humanoids....."
Lord Dark Helmet: "I knew it! I'm surrounded by a**holes!"
Humanity bad, yeah, yeah.
If you consider the origination of 'Jerks' it is exclusively masculine - or was before genders got politicized
As someone who loves language & accents. These are the things that I love. Going all the way back to PIE (Proto-Indo-European) its amazing how much has been kept for 10,000 years. Sometimes with exact spelling & use.
Human history goes back 6,000 as much as we know, animals and the planet a lot longer naturally
@@muma6559 You mean written history, right?
Overall, it is true, that the further "in time" we go, the less we know. I'd argue languages are some of the best ways to study ancient cultures.
Love this so much, as people evolve so too must our language and the interpretation.
Does that mean a female lycanthrope is a Wifwolf?
Some of them are wifbears
@@dragonlord8415Lycanthrope = wolf-human (Lycan = wolf)
Technically lycanthrope is also gendered because the last part comes from anthrop which is that Greek root for man. By that logic a wifwolf would be a lycogyne.
@@SirPhysics
As a bit of a linguistics nerd, I have to be annoying and correct you :3c
"Anthro-" comes from the Greek word "ἄνθρωπος" (ánthropos), which means "human" or "person" and is gender-neutral.
"Andro-" comes from the Greek word "ἀνήρ" (anér), with the genitive form "ἀνδρός" (andrós), which means "man" or "male."
They are similar, so it's a fairly easy mistake to make.
I think gendered versions of lycanthrope would probably be something like "Androlycanthrope" and "Gynolycanthrope", but I'm not super well versed in how Greek works.
Hope I cleared things up :3 !!!!
@@fgrey- Hence why we have androids, and the often forgotten, but not by me, gynoids
The amount of times ive had to explain that the word "man" used to be gender nuetral even with glaring context clues in the text when having a discussion surprises me. Thank you for putting this info in a nice little short
The word "man" IS gender neutral. In fact, all words in English are gender neutral, your language isn't gendered
used to be? still is.
@@Duck-wc9deLanguage is gendered in that sense. Man (singular) should not be used to reffer to woman, but the use and meaning of men can vary depending on the context. Saying pronouns are gendered isn't woke or anything, it's a linguistic fact.
@@Duck-wc9deSome English words have gender though. It can be because they keep the gender that they had in Old English or because they are borrowed from French.
@@askia8704 just because a word USED to be gendered in its base language doesn't mean that when English mugged that language and turned it's pockets for loose grammar and stole the word, that it is still gendered, pronouns are gendered obviously but English does not gender it's words though many other countries may thing we did because of words they recognize that we stole from their language
Referring to "the world of men" just makes sense and nobody reads that as the world of males
Some politically motivated lunatics that want to force language changes do so quite deliberatly
Then those who read it wrong are stupid.@@msh2193
@@msh2193 Lord of the rings is not everyday context though.
@@msh2193 Unless you've never read a book in your life, I don't see why you'd fail to make the distinction.
@@msh2193sure, but that's because Tolkien was originally trying to craft mythology, not simply writing a story and that was the common way to write such things in mythology. Yes, it'd be weird to write in such ways while trying to present something in a modern way, but it really shouldn't be confusing when it's clear that the context is ancient rather than modern.
As much as language evolves I feel it is up to those who know the true meaning of words to educate those who wish to use language to create hate and hardship. Also to be fair most people be dumb as rocks so no winning there either.... love your work ❤😊 keep the stories coming
"Man" is the multiple for human, "men" is the multiple for a male person. So if you're saying "humans are flawed" you'd say "Man is flawed" not "Men are flawed". Just a (major) pet peeve of mine 😅
actually "men" have always stood for both, both constructions really mean the same. I guess "Man is flawed" is slightly clearer for what you mean though
Plus Men is a plural term for Man, so in this context “Men” would be “A number of Man” or “huMANS”. So using men is correct.
@@kingtutancamon3775You misunderstand. "Man" (without the article) is a term used for the human race, as is "mankind". The OP is correct. HTH
Awww honey, language is made by people and we're all morons. It's cute that you still hope for consistency though.
You're tripping over the use of singular to indicate something universal, abstract or figurative. Think of "the sofa is a part of the TV watching experience" vs "I own two sofas". 'Man' is _always_ singular, it's just that in the sentence you quote, the singular is correct.
I like how the creator of the manga “Delicous In Dungeon” or “Dungeon Meshi” went around this by calling humans Tall Men.
I love the world building in that show! Really shows that the author has thought about it far more in-depth than the surface level scrapes most others do.
Well, I'm not weeb enough to know this, but I do know the language it was originally written in and I can tell you that is most definitely a thing pushed by the translators and not in the original source material nor the language. 人は人、それだけだ
@@deathmorphosis …do you read dungeon meshi? the race is calledトールマン. it’s definitely not just something being pushed by translators
Omg I wasn't expecting to see a comment related to my current obsession here lol
Wereman and wifman are SO FANTASY!
I like that you brought this up. I saw an argument maybe two weeks ago claiming that Tolkien was racist for saying 'men' and not including women in the term. It was on twitter, so I argued back with way less words... but yeah.
This is my new answer to that comment
As a woman, I’m not going to deny myself access to a word that can include me. I’m going to hold onto it as long as possible.
With you on this 😉
(I thought it was very cool, when studying Spanish and French, that women get to use both 'theys' while the poor guys are stuck with one! 😂)
@@cmm5542as native spanish speaker, its upseting to be honest. Like yeah you are included but the sexist proffesor of the momment would always say that todos is not neutral but male (false, but most of us were not teached that). And then they would proceed to say as well: "If there's ONE male and 99 females you still have to use todos"... Which is not true, again, but you can guess how that makes feel every kid with the usage of the word (even boys).
A gendered word should not be used for both Ganders and make one gender invisible by doing so, that is disgusting to me. Your gender is not importent enough do be addressed or recognised, thanks people - ah men.
I feel this- I’m not bothered by “man” as a generalization for humans, and I actually like being in that part of the archaic language umbrella. Because of my faith background it’s not unusual to sometimes hear women included in the category of “brothers” or “sons” (which in the case of the latter, is an intentional statement of spiritual gender equality that was very counterculture in its day.) I don’t mind being included in group terms like “guys,” “boys,” or “lads” either… maybe it’s uncommon, but I guess I’m just very flexible with group labels like that.
@@LetTalesBeToldI think I understand you, and mostly agree. I too have been included, and as a christian, we are all brothers and sisters and mothers of his, as he said ;) But yes, and also guys is almost gender-neutral now... it just means people of the group. For me, for others, but sometimes it's more male oriented. It doesn't have to be exact, to be honest.
I will always use "men" as a gender neutral. If people really have problems with it, who's problem is it really?
'whose...' 😊
I take it you're a man
Same. It just sounds so...poetic.
Mankind sounds also great to me. Humankind... Brother eeeeh 🤭
@@angeloelimelech6346 what's wrong with being called a human?? 🥴
That's why it's called werewolf?!!?? How did I not put that together?😂
It is in harry potter and the prisoner of ascaban, explaind. - Fun fact. At least in the movie, i can not remember the book well enought.
That's why context is important. Human, man, person can all mean the same thing
I think it's still acceptable. "To boldly go where no man has gone before." still sounds right to me.
It was the placing of the 'boldly' that used to be the problem there!
No one just doesn’t sound good
It’s epic in tone is what it is
@@nicolab2075 and now it's the very concept of gender and identity. Like it actually fucking matters and makes it easier to exist in this hellhole
It was changed to no "one" back in the 1980s, because they understand that it needed to be more inclusive and respectful. There's no reason we can't do so today.
Thats why we call it Mankind...
and Humans...
It's an old fashion word for humanity. I doubt many people wouldn't know that.
Many people don't know that or are willfully ignorant of it
In today's world many are willfully ignorant of many things bc " it doesn't apply to me or my feelings so it's not true". When fact cares not for your emotions nor your personal life
That usage dominated in a time period when women were excluded from politics, work, and property, and were generally regarded as inferior. The fact that the same word that means "man" also meant "human" in that time isn't exactly an innocent quirk of etymology.
Yes, any people don’t understand that grammatically speaking the term isn’t necessarily reduced to masculine. English is a language that has non-gendered terms, in comparison to something like Spanish practically everything is gendered and something like “gender neutral” would sound like gibberish because it doesn’t exist.
On recent years, people have tried to implement gender neutral terms in Spanish, and it for sure has come under a lot of criticism for "being a distortion of language".
I don't have a strong opinion on it, so for the moment I think it's fine to use it for individual non-binary people
English has some gender specific terms, especially in spelling… and every damn one came from French, except for King and Queen, those came from the changes in pronunciation of the Anglo-Saxon “Cyang”.
I'm going to use it even harder now
-Michael Scott, maybe.
That's what she said
@@Sandra-rj8jm hehehe
I read a poem once that went approximately:
There are words that are called too incorrect,
And others deemed not deft,
That carried to their sterile end, there would be no language left.
I don't know where that poem is from but it truly holds true in these modern times.
This is, sadly, exactly what's happening today.
What else is the lady gonna get paid to do?
There have always been short sighted people like her.
The problem is that our society holds them up on a pedestal.
Also, those SSRI eyes.
They have that look that gives me the heebie-jeebies everytime.
Read Ella Minnow Pea, a novel by Mark Dunn, on the topic of reducing and restricting language.
If you add to that, that language today among the newborns is nothing but incoherent slang that sounds like garbage being dragged through the street then that saying is absolutely correct.
I don't know why you did this, but found it engaging and informative lmao
I use it occasionally when I’m writing in philosophy or theology, but we don’t use it”men” plural we use “Man” singular to describe the species.
E
Makes sense. As “men” is plural it makes you think of multiple individuals instead of a collective. On an individual basis the gender connotation of man/men is much more pervasive.
I too regret that man is no longer used as a gender, neutral word. Mainly because calling someone human is a little awkward.
I know, right? 😅
May I offer up people?
@@vainpiers useful with a regular speech, less useful for story writing. When you’re dealing with not just humans but elves, vampires, aliens, etc. the term people can be pretty vague and lead to confusion
@@bryanmcclure2220keep using human and eventually it'll become natural.
'humanoid' = more accurate
The elder scrolls does it best in my mind. "Something something, age of men and mer" (human and elves)
This woman is pretty far out there. Men was gender neutral all the way through the 20th century. Languages drift enough by themselves. We do not need eggheads forcing the process to win political arguments.
Just because most people agree on something doesn't mean they're not all wrong.
That's not how language works though. If enough people agree on something, it'll be correct. That's how languages evolve.
Thanks but I will use what I want
Alright? 😂
all the power to ya
>But unless you want to sound like the King James Bible…
thanks, that's exactly the vibe i was fixin for!
Growing up I was taught that the masculine term encompassed the feminine, so something like "men" would be inclusive of both men and women. However, as society continues to advance toward more and more equality what I'm seeing is the desire to break away from that encompassing. It's a desire to assert independence and equality by demanding a term used to denote a single gender no longer also be used to denote the whole.
Just in case this video somehow didn't prompt this thought in any of you:
Man - men
Woman - women
(The same is true for fireman, postman, etc)
Human - humans
English is once again making complete sense in every way
Also pronouncing women as wiimen.. English is weird
In order to include women in those jobs, in the UK firemen are now firefighters and postmen are now posties.
@@grahvis I know that, my point is man - men except with human - humans
Its interesting to me how different people or groups of people use language differently for example I am 27 years old and in my growing up and education using men in the way you describe is one of the ways I use the word and was taught to use it I run into very few who assume I am talking about men alone. I have noted that most people that assume that are people that come from cities and urban areas where as people that use men as a general term come from Rural or working class backgrounds. this is of course not always true but it seems to broadly hold.
Honestly I say we bring it back as gender neutral!!!
Man, at least on the individual level, stoner-inspired slang is thirty years ahead of it, dude my bro. ;)
1st video of yours I've seen! 1 - absolutely adore,100% here for linguistics, instantly subscribed. 2 - how exciting to randomly have your video pop up just a few days after I finished your Daindreth series!!! I had no idea you even made videos!!
I'll continue to use mankind instead of humankind or humanity. You can address me as your highness if you want.
May I be “Her Eminence”?
Unless you want to sound like the Bible, are we sure that isnt what Tolkien wanted? It’s basically the Bible of fantasy. I’m willing to roll the dice on that one.
Of course Tolkien wrote in a deliberately archaic voice. Elisabeth didn't say not to do it. She said not to do it if you don't want to sound archaic. If you do, go for it; there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
@@redbirdjazzz Using "man" to signify "human race" isn't archaic.
@@horacelidenbrock3905 In English it is.
@@GoldenKaos Only according to activists, which, as we know, are stupid.
@@GoldenKaos No it's not. In fact it's significantly more common to refer to all people as man than human
It doesn’t help that a lot of the ostensibly gender neutral uses of the word ‘men’ were made when, men were treated as the default, so authors probably mostly had men in mind, even if they weren’t consciously excluding women. In the bible, for example, instructions are aimed at men by default.
I happen to think that the reason most people nowadays think 'men were treated as the default' is simply because they are not AWARE 'men' was used gender-neutrally. Because there is really no other historical evidence of it.
If you recognize 'men' was being used neutrally by our ancestors, then women were always included equally. It's only because MODERNS think 'men' means 'only males,' that history can be seen as 'default male.' Which doesn't make sense anyway since women were involved in EVERY historical social achievement of humanity. (More women than men have been Christians since the earliest church - hardly likely if the Bible were actually aimed at men. I was written in Greek, and 'anthropos' is ALSO gender-neutral). I don't think our ancestors were ignorant of what was right in front of them; I think we have just forgotten it.
Exactly. Using men as default misogynistic
One example of many that's still sometimes used is the phrase "man and wife" rather than "husband and wife." The former assumes the man as the default person while the wife is the add-on and possession/property. It'd be like saying "I now pronounce you woman and husband." At least "husband and wife" names the counterparts on equal standing.
It's not using men as "defualt" just using men as supiriors. when talking about, or calling upon a race of people, you are speaking about/to the leaders, and military of that race. Something that has always been in every culture on earth male dominated.
Thank you, finally a comment that addresses this point.
It still can be gender neutral and most people don't assume you're using it in a masculine sense if used in the context of describing an entire group or race.
Weremen checks out
In Dutch, we still use the exact word 'men' to describe a generalized group of humans. 'Men kan op zondag naar de kerk te gaan' = 'People of both genders can go to church on sunday'.
In Afrikaans - descended from 17th century Dutch - the words for a male and a human are morphologically entirely seperate. Man is the singular for a male, manne is the plural, and mens is the singular for human, with mense the plural.
As for females, vrou is the singular, and either vroue or vrouens (less popular) are the plural.
In fact, we even have compounds of them often used when complaining about men or women in general. In that case a man (literally male human) is mansmens, and a woman (literally female human) is vroumens.
Same for Dutch: mens, vrouw and man for human/person, woman and man. De mens, or de mensheid translates to men/humanity. The Dutch word men means they or one. Men wil - they want, men kan - one could.
In French, men is still neutral, such as "ils" which is both male only or male and female
Also Homme means humankind and homme means man
How is it neutral? That's implying that male is she default and female is an afterthought, which is pretty much the issue with gendered words in all western language
@@alexs.5871No, "elles" is used where there is no male in the group. "Ils" implies a mixed group or male only. HTH
"Ils" and "elles" are about grammatical gender, not whether things are male or female. Most of the nouns they apply to have nothing like a sex, and most that do are all grouped as masculine or feminine regardless of their actual sex.
@@alexs.5871the only one calling female the afterthought in this chain of comments is you
Most normal people outside of LA and New York still use the term man to refer to humanity, not just males.
Those are some very well-loved books in the opening shot. I haven't reread a book in so long, looking at those makes me miss it.
Disagree. I think it would be no big deal to hear a speech in which “man” is used to mean humanity. I don’t think the term has become archaic.
Yes it has.
It's been fairly recently decided, by a relative minority, that it is archaic. Which is not how language USUALLY evolves, but whatever.
I have no objections whatsoever to 'sounding like the King James Bible.' The most beautiful prose ever written (sorry Shakespeare, you take second billing 😁)
The discourse around the King James Bible is why I think the gender neutral usage is archaic. I’m an elder millennial and in my lifetime I’ve seen the discourse go from, “We don’t need gender neutral translations of the Bible because everyone knows ‘man’ includes women,” to, “Gender neutral translations pervert the Bible because ‘man’ means [cis-]men only.”
@@digitaljanus I personally believe the terms woman and female are achaic. They always have felt so. Why must they include the words man and male? We need new terms.
I don’t think anyone misunderstands what men means when in context.
I use Men just the way Tolkien did. No one needs to assume anything about it. It's clear from context.
Catering to others ignorance helps to perpetuate it. Books should challenge one in many ways: vocabulary, philosophy, and religion at the least. Many in our time struggle to read and understand things from even two hundred years ago such as the Federalist Papers -- a series of newspaper articles intended for common consumption. As a people its important that we be able to understand the thoughts of past generations.
I love that you can have this neutral, factual discussion about this without getting offended like so many people do. And great historical context!
(Also love that you didn’t insult Tolkien, that’s way too trendy these days).
that use will be popular again in the 41 milenium
As a non-native English learner I was always confused by that. Thanks for clarifying it to me.
A wifman explaining historic etymology has got to be the most attractive intellectual stimuli I've realized to admire.
?
The word nerdiness is much appreciated. And I agree, at present, 'men' doesn't work to describe all of humanity. We shouldn't edit past works that use it in a gender neutral way, since we should understand it didn't always mean just males. Just like we should understand old songs that use the word 'gay' aren't referring exclusively to same-sex oriented people. It took on the meaning of being free-spirited and disinclined to wait until marriage for sexual activity. The Gay 90's. Gay Paree. It included the people we now describe as gay, but wasn't exclusive to them. But later, when attitudes towards sex before marriage loosened a bit, it seemed redundant, since everybody was a bit gay that way. Men who liked other men were not allowed to marry, so they had to be 'gay', and liked the mouthfeel of that word--would you want to be described as 'homosexual'? Five syllables. They also helpfully gave us the one-syllable term 'straight' (and the somewhat insulting descriptive term 'breeders') for heterosexuals, since that's even more of a mouthful. Gay and Straight works, neither is insulting, and anybody with an ounce of blood in him/her can feel 'gay' sometimes. In the old way. ;)
And even before 'Gay Paree,' the word could simply mean 'merry and bright' without any sexual connotations!
I remember a scene in an old film where a headwaiter is describing the recipe for his famous salad: 'You must slice the onion very thin . . . It gives the salad flavour; it makes it bright, refreshing, and gay.'
Language does indeed change all the time!
@@cmm5542 That's from Easter Parade. The headwaiter who behaved so impeccably when chatty customers took up his time, then didn't order anything was played by the wonderful Jules Munshin. Who was gay in the older sense only.
But bear in mind, MGM's musical production of teh time was crammed to the gills with gay guys--in the newer sense of 'gay'. So much of the best talent in that field was composed of gay men. So there'd be a lot of injokes--remember how popular Cole Porter was then, and on some level, everybody knew about him. And didn't care, so long as he didn't come out and say it. The word was transitioning by then. Hmm. Transitioning is another word that's transitioning these days.
Another example would be This Heart of Mine, a song written for the film Ziegfield Follies, which Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer danced to. "And then quite suddenly I saw you and I dreamed of gay amours"--the setting of the number is clearly back in the era when 'gay' meant "out for a good time" regardless of orientation. However, that was produced by Arthur Freed's unit, which was, as mentioned, full of gay men (Freed is cedited as having written the lyrics, but many suspect he didn't).
The incredibly beautiful orchestation was by Conrad Salinger, who effectively created the MGM orchestral sound--and who was in private life, gay in the sense of attracted to men. Not at all in the sense of being light-hearted and merry. His death in his early 60's is believed by many to have been suicide.
Many who used the word in popular songs at the time, whether they were homosexual or not, used it with an awareness that it could mean several things, one of which the general public knew about, but didn't want to acknowlege openly.
It's damned interesting. Btw, have you ever seen the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Bunny Hugged"? You know, the one with Ravishing Ronald. People knew what was going on. Whether they said so or not. ;)
@@christopherlyons5900I like reading your posts. They're always so full of nuanced information that either I didn't know or felt like I was the only one who did! 🙂
I haven't seen that cartoon, but I know what you mean about Old Hollywood.
There's actually something quite - confidential? - in presenting something in a way that everyone knows what you mean without coming right out and saying it. You feel like you're all in on a secret 😆
Witch king after hearing eowin isn’t a man.
“Then what are you, your to tall for a hobbit or dwarf, and you don’t seem to be an elf either.”
Do what you like, not what you want others to like you for.
Didn't even Tolkien play with this men is men and men is human.
I mean the prophecy about the Witch king can't be killed by any man, sounds like no human can kill him. But than a woman does it.
Maybe in English it's not as clear (I read mainly the German translation, just once in English)
Yes, I'm sure it was a deliberate play on the double meaning.
If I remember correctly: In the English version, when referring to humans in general, he capitalized the first letter (“Man”). But the prophecy was written with the letter un-capitalized (“man”), denoting a human male. Capitalization rules in English don’t translate over too accurately in German 🤷🏼♂️
languages evolve thats true.... in general.
But in recent times it has been devolving, thanks for the example and explanation.
I’m so used to the wording in the Bible that I never batted an eye at it 😂 I guess it would mostly be readers of older texts you wouldn’t get confused… thanks for the history, that’s super cool! I wonder if there’s any newer translations of the Bible that uses “humans” instead.
Yeah, there are some. Think the NIV does, but I might be confused . . .
I believe NASB does the gender neutral terms when possible, but I could be wrong.
And I do personally like the significance of “sons” in reference to the family of God because it’s a statement of inheritance. Women were rarely household heirs in the contemporary culture of the New Testament, so calling the whole collective of believers “sons” was a great statement of spiritual gender equality in the inheritance of all believers. 😊
@@LetTalesBeToldAny idea why? Have you ever thought about the introduction of the woman who was made especially for the man? Don't be swayed by any text that caters to the false teachings that are the opposite of your very correct feeling. HTH
@@malcolmhart1795 I’m very sorry, but I’m not quite sure what you’re asking/communicating. Would you mind clarifying it a little more? 😅
@@LetTalesBeToldYes, I feel the same way. I mean, when I was a kid I didn't quite understand the significance of it, but as I got older I began to realize what a big deal it was that I got to be a 'son,' too!
If I am burdened to chose between minimizing my vocabulary to placate the dullard, or to speak freely, I shall always chose the later and find myself in company of higher quality rather than of greater quantity.
I would disagree. I think it's perfectly standard to refer to humans as "men" or "man."
The 2010s in a nutshell- people pretending social debates are over and settled when they completely aren't and there's a lot more gray area than the self proclaimed victors of these debates would have you believe
I love it when you share these little bits of information. Creators like you are why I love the internet.
I mean, by context is easy to know if you are using man as a general termn for human, of just men, so... nop
"Man" is the general term, not "men".
@@malcolmhart1795 ok, i will change that, thanks, but you still undertood what i meant, right??
Just like it's always obvious when "they" is singular or plural?
@@shadowxaf are you been sarcastic?
Wereman and Wifman, with man being the sufix for human, sounds so much cooler and less ambiguous than what we have now.
XD wereman I want this to come back
Wait would a female werewolf have been a wifwolf then?
Oh no, please don't tell the furries...
Hearing about things like this is precisely why I love etymology.
The Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary makes no mention of a "wereman", which would be a tautology, since both "wer" and "man" mean roughly the same thing. Etymology is fascinating, but you should beware of misinformation used to peddle specific agenda.
So informative in such a short clip. Bravo!