[techtalk] Etymology

[Karl-Heinz Zimmer]

On Monday 14 May 2001 00:46, jenn at simegen.com wrote:
> Kai MacTane wrote:
> > In Old High German, there were two major types of "men": "wo-men" and
> > "wer-men". "Wo-men" were female and "wer-men" male. The "wer" in
> > "wer-man" is cognate with the Latin "vir", which also means "man" (in
> > our current sense of "adult male human").
>
> I've heard also of 'hus-mann' and 'wif-mann' .. which have obvious
> modern derivatives.

Hi Jenn, hi Kai,

any idea where to find some more details on this?

To be honest I did not know about these old words, it looks very interesting
since in german language we have a very similiar problem when using the word
'man' (which in german stands for 'people' or 'they' as in 'They say that...')
and about half of the population thus are being addressed with a word that
is supposed to be a short form of 'Mann'.

Your theory could mean a solution to the common problem how to avoid using 
'man' when you want to talk about a group of people consisting of female and
male persons: If I understand you correctly 'man' is a very old word once 
being used to specify human beings and our modern use of that word in german
language is just the very same as the very old use (and perhaps has been the
same *all*the*time* through the many centuries) so there is realy no need to
stop using that word - even for die-hard feminists - but I could be a good
idea to tell them what was and is the real meaning of 'man'...

Karl-Heinz
-- 
Karl-Heinz Zimmer                            But the only way to really make
Senior Software Engineer                     sure your server is secure,
Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB                 sadly, is knowledge.
<mailto:khz at klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se>    --Michelle Murrain, 12 May 2001