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Two-man women’s bobsled | ||
Tags: Olympic Games | Gender | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 1 of 13 25 February 2010 at 12:32am | IP Logged |
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I just watched a bit of the so-called 'two-man women's bobsled' competition in the Olympics. In hockey, the women's teams often have a 'man advantage', a 'man short', or a 'man-on-man' defence. English has struggled with such sports terms for a long time, and I see very little progress. Anyone see any recent improvements or offer any hope?
Are there other languages that are having similar problems with these terms in bobsled, hockey or other sports at the Olympics? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Hobbema Senior Member United States Joined 5743 days ago 541 posts - 575 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, French, Dutch | Message 2 of 13 25 February 2010 at 2:22am | IP Logged |
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I think Spanish and Portuguese (probably others as well) have a slightly different chauvinistic bias.
You could have a stadium of 14,000 women watching women's figure skating, and you would refer to that huge group of people (them) as "elas". If one single male figure skater walked onto the ice, you'd have to refer to the entire crowd (them) as "eles". :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5569 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 3 of 13 25 February 2010 at 3:38am | IP Logged |
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The problem is not limited to sports. We have yet to come up with a good alternative term for "manned spaceflight". It's sometimes referred to as "crewed spaceflight", but that only works well in writing, due to the ambiguity of "crewed"/"crude" in speech. Edited by Levi on 25 February 2010 at 3:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| genini1 Senior Member United States Joined 5470 days ago 114 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 13 25 February 2010 at 4:44am | IP Logged |
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Man refers to a single entity of the general collective of humanity in this instance, if it bothers you a lot consider them different words with the same spelling and pronunciation, there are a number of them that exist in English.
5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6770 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 13 25 February 2010 at 4:46am | IP Logged |
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Man in that context means "human". I don't see any problem, except for people who are going out of their way to
find opportunities to feel insulted. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5424 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 13 25 February 2010 at 6:35pm | IP Logged |
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Actually in women's basketball, it's called player-on-player defense.
Edit: Like the above two posters said, "man" can also refer to people/humanity as a whole. Like in history shows where you hear "the beginning of man." Edited by Johntm on 25 February 2010 at 6:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5497 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 7 of 13 25 February 2010 at 11:36pm | IP Logged |
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I'm not a Feminist of any sorts, but if I were, I would look for something better to
complain about than how a language works. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| The Blaz Senior Member Canada theblazblog.blogspotRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5602 days ago 120 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swahili, French, Sign Language, Esperanto | Message 8 of 13 26 February 2010 at 12:24am | IP Logged |
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As a grad student in critical studies.... I'm just going to work on my late essay instead
of taking this one on.... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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