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Human vs Man

Mythopoet

Auror
I guess my thinking is that you can't address every sociological issue that might be triggered by your work. A lot of this stuff is very regional or niche. There's a certain segment of the population that is super concerned about it and they think it's the most important thing, but much of the world sees things completely differently.

I think it's only a small segment of English speaking people who are really concerned with whether the use of "man" in the sense of "human" is going to hurt people's feelings and make them feel left out even though by definition the usage of the word is not leaving anyone out. And I'll be honest, I'm not really concerned about them. I believe that the whole point of storytelling is sharing your unique perspective and style and that modifying those things to suit your audience is generally a bad idea. If you genuinely prefer the usage of Man as in human then go for it. As long as you don't expect everyone to enjoy it.

The question remains how many people would be genuinely confused by the usage? From my perspective I'm not all that concerned with whether or not my prose choices are hurting people's feelings. If I hurt their feelings they can just never read my work again and that's fair enough. I don't expect my work to appeal to everyone. But I am concerned about creating confusion. I want my prose to be clear and easy to understand and easy to be immersed in. (Sheila's example of the usage in LOTR was interesting, but sounds like more of a translation error in judgement. Using the same word for males and for mankind doesn't make as much sense in other languages.)

Personally, I think "human" tends to sound more modern or more suitable for sci fi and sounds out of place in fantasy. But simply using "man" or "men" can certainly be confusing at times depending on the context. I'd probably opt for sticking with the term "mankind" to eliminate confusion.

But a question that I find much more interesting than this one is how to you refer to males and females of a completely separate fantasy species (assuming it has males and females)? Using man and woman can be confusing, but using male and female sounds so much more clinical and over serious. You could make up terms, but you always have to tread carefully with made up terms which can often be even more confusing or end up just silly.
 
I wouldn't use the word 'man' to mean humanity if the story took place in a modern or near modern setting, and it's not part of my regular vocabulary. But I don't see anything wrong with using it, and I find it much more fitting in a medieval or similar age fantasy than the word 'humanity.' I have no idea about the historical accuracy or anything, but it just sounds much more poetic and older.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
But simply using "man" or "men" can certainly be confusing at times depending on the context. I'd probably opt for sticking with the term "mankind" to eliminate confusion.

Yeah, I've been meaning to ask, for those who are a little more irked by the word "men" in this context, would "mankind" or, I don't know, "manfolk" be any better?
 

Gryphos

Auror
Yeah, I've been meaning to ask, for those who are a little more irked by the word "men" in this context, would "mankind" or, I don't know, "manfolk" be any better?

'Mankind' isn't that bad to me, since it can be seen to be referring to the 'man' present in the word 'man' and 'woman'. I still obviously prefer 'humankind' though.
 

Trick

Auror
While I am linguistically all for the words Man and Mankind being used, as they often are, to encompass the human race, I find that I don't actually use them very often. In my WIP, there are two major races, both of which would be interpreted as human by the reader, IMO. But they are different and are referred to by their unique races. Epyrians for one group, Merks for another group. Men and women are always exactly that, men or women and not both. This of course applies specifically to their physical gender since this work doesn't really delve into how people feel about their gender. If I do that in another work, I'll think on it more deeply before progressing.

Of course, thinking about this, got me all riled up about something similar. I hate the color-based racial terms. The made-up ones I use are culture-based, and come from names that these people gave to themselves. Calling people 'whites' or 'blacks' etc. is far more bothersome to me than Mankind etc. Whenever I fill out a form where ten races are listed by the names they have chosen for themselves and I have to mark WHITE I feel a little... I don't know... grouped together with a bunch of people that I may or may not identify with. I'm Irish by race and American by birth. But to the great machine of society I'm just white (and I'm closer to peach, BTW, not that some Irish people aren't accurately called 'white' hehe). It disregards my culture I guess. And it isn't very accurate. Could you imagine if the next form you had to fill out had these options: White, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow? Wouldn't that be super racist? So why do two huge groups with a ton of diversity between them get lumped into two color categories as if they were all from the same spot in the crayon box of the world? And how exactly did we end up in color categories that aren't even accurate? Idk. Maybe it doesn't bother other people but it has always bugged me.
 

Ray M.

Scribe
In response to OP: in a medieval setting, I would use Man instead of Human because the latter sounds like a term coined in the later centuries (saying this without having looked it up). Man sounds more natural in the common folk speech of medieval times to me. But I get where you're coming from.
 
In response to OP: in a medieval setting, I would use Man instead of Human because the latter sounds like a term coined in the later centuries (saying this without having looked it up). Man sounds more natural in the common folk speech of medieval times to me. But I get where you're coming from.

If you have nonhuman races in your world this will be very confusing.
 

glutton

Inkling
I prefer humanity over man or mankind just because it sounds grander.

'All of humanity will fall under my sway' vs 'all of mankind will fall under my sway.'

Then, 'Humanity will never bow down to you! I will cut through your illusions and expose your falsehood!" and finally 'False god, you thought you could impose your will on humanity. But you couldn't even impose it on one girl. *Beep*'

Man or mankind in place of humanity would sound less cool there IMO XD.
 
However, man in traditional usage refers to the species, to humanity, or "mankind", as a whole. The usage persists in all registers of English although it has an old-fashioned tone.

I picked this line straight out of wikipedia, which is not always the most reliable source, but I think it shows that it's absolutely fine to use the term Men instead of Humans, which sounds a little awkward to me. There are other sources that indicate this as well (Merriam-Webster's one definition being "the human race"). It's old-fashioned, but is it outdated? I don't think so, although just recently I've noticed a slight movement away from it. In the hindsight I seem to have avoided this "problem" altogether with my world as I don't have a species or a race called Human at all (yay me :p ). I don't have a problem with it; to me it's just a choice of personal preference.
 
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