Do some people care of or not happy of "a man" being used as "a person" in some sentence?
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1Do you care? I don't.– FumbleFingersJan 23 at 18:22
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1See Can "he" and "man" refer to all genders?– FumbleFingersJan 23 at 18:24
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[So some people care whether etc.] care of makes no sense here. You can use mind: So some people mind when a man is used for a person?– LambieJan 23 at 18:46
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I am not clear whether the question is 'How many people will I annoy if I write 'a man' all the times when 'a person' is also correct?', or the reverse.– Michael HarveyJan 23 at 18:49
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Or whether you use the word man while referring to both men and women. If that's the case, you may be sure that some people would mind. Man is sometimes used to refer to mankind, as in:: God created a beautiful world; man has despoiled it. While this passes for some, others would rephrase it.– Ronald SoleJan 23 at 19:52
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1 Answer
Quite a few people now object to the use of male forms as generic forms, including the use of "man" to mean person. Others do not. This was once very common in English us usage. it is now, I believe, considerably less common, but it does still occur.
A better answer would be possible with more specific context, including one or more actual example sentences.
answered Jan 23 at 20:42
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It has fascinated me, as a native English speaker living in Portugal, to discover that if parents here have a daughter, they have a filha. If they have four daughters in a row, they have four filhas but if the fifth child is a boy, they have five filhos (boys, to mean chlldren**. In my experience, such language rules favouring the male gender irritate Portuguese women rather less than they might their sisters in the English-speaking world. Jan 24 at 17:11