Timeline for If 'little girl' is 「少女」, then why is 'little boy' 「少年」?
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16 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:43 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://japanese.stackexchange.com/ with https://japanese.stackexchange.com/
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| Sep 20, 2015 at 14:17 | vote | accept | Keale | ||
| Sep 17, 2015 at 21:25 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackJapanese/status/644623321364066305 | ||
| Sep 17, 2015 at 11:57 | comment | added | blutorange | The list in this question might be of interest as well. | |
| Sep 17, 2015 at 11:53 | comment | added | blutorange | @DariusJahandarie Not one source, but the bigger Japanese monolingual dictionaries often give some etymology for the words they list (but take with a grain of salt, sometimes they include speculation). Sometimes I come across a word and wonder where they come from, and I look it up. There's also an online dictionary for this, gogen-allguide. | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 19:11 | comment | added | Darius Jahandarie | Wow, never knew the etymology of any of those, fascinating! (Do you have a favorite source for stuff like that?) | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 16:14 | comment | added | blutorange | There are more pairs of words with a similar relationship: 姫(ひ-め, 日-女) and 彦(ひ-こ, 日-子) [=女子・男子の美称]; and the pair 乙女(おと-め) and 男(おと-こ, おと-子) [=年の若い女性・男性]; and the pair 娘(むす-め, 生す-女) and 息子(むす-こ, 生す-子). Interestingly, 子 is sometimes used to refer to (young) girls these days... | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 8:54 | answer | added | Keale | timeline score: 11 | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 6:16 | comment | added | Keale | @macraf Err... I think your comment right there will be more suited as an answer I guess? I actually kinda got enlightened by your first comment so I'm now creating an answer myself, but please feel free to answer. | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 6:07 | comment | added | macraf | @Keale Why is Dutch "Meer" called "See" in German and Dutch "Zee" is called "Meer" in German? Because languages evolve and when a need appears to make a distinction from more general term (something like "body of water" here) a new word is created. Probably the same way 少年 was used for young person regardless of age (like in law today) and then a need to make a distinction between sexes arose. 少女 was most likely devised in the same way as (political correctness aside) like "actress" is linguistically a subset of "actor". | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 5:45 | history | edited | Keale | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
improvement on the question
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| Sep 16, 2015 at 5:34 | comment | added | Keale | @macraf I get your point. In general, the masculine form is used. Maybe my question is confusing (I will try to rephrase) but what I really want to know is why was the kanji 年 used instead of 男. | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 5:28 | comment | added | user4092 | Just my two cent, the term 少年 is most often heard when it refers to young criminals, who tend to be male. | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 5:24 | comment | added | macraf | Given that you read the wiki page you quoted, I don't really understand your concern. Isn't it natural that in most languages grammatical gender is highly asymmetrical and a masculine form is used to indicate a general meaning? Going from the other way round: would an English reader understand that the California Child Actor's Bill (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Child_Actor%27s_Bill) pertains only to boys? And wonder why isn't it called "California Child Actor's and Actress' Bill" or would he (sic!) take it for granted? | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 4:10 | review | First posts | |||
| Sep 16, 2015 at 9:21 | |||||
| Sep 16, 2015 at 4:10 | history | asked | Keale | CC BY-SA 3.0 |