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From: hitchens@ut-sally.UUCP (Ron Hitchens)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Confused humans
Message-ID: <2027@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Apr-84 16:53:37 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.2027
Posted: Fri Apr 20 16:53:37 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Apr-84 02:40:30 EST
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 38

[has anyone considered the bug's feelings on this matter?]

     After reading the recent articles about sexism in language, man=male,
etc., I got to thinking about something I learned in a History of the
English Language class a couple of years ago.  I think I may have realized 
something obvious.  Let me recap my train of thought.  Given: the word
"woman" descended from the Old English word wifeman.  In O.E. "man" meant
a person, and the word wifeman was a particular type of man.  Wifeman
contracted to wi'man, then wiman and finally became woman when angular
printing was popular (it was common to change i's to o's for readability).
Well, (I thought) that's seems feasible, but if "man" was generic, and 
wifeman was the female case, why not husbandman for the male?  Then a tiny
ray of sunshine penetrated my dark and musty cranium: 

   If
      wifeman = wi'man = woman
   why not
      husbandman = hu'man = human ??

   What I figure is this:  Originally the word for a person was "man",
the qualifiers "wife" and "husband" were used to specify which type a
given individual was.  At least that was the intended structure.  But
somewhere along the line the meanings of human and man got mixed up,
probably during one of the periods when the Normans outlawed English
and it had to survive underground.  Plus, of course, the patriarcal
nature of civilization tends to identify males as more complete people
which would add to the confusion.  Plus English comes from German, in
German the word "man" (pronounced mon) means an unspecified person,
could be a holdover.
     Anyway, sufficient postulation.  Just a thought.  Anyone out there
have a better grasp of the roots of English ?  

Cheers,
Ron Hitchens         hitchens@ut-sally.UUCP
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