Tuesday, June 24, 2014

From the mouth of a child

Yesterday I was watched several episodes of the 1973 Star Trek animated series with my 4 year old son. I was happy he was getting into it. Curiously enough at one point he says to me "when the man is talking at the start of each episode why does he say 'Where no MAN has gone before' there are lot's of women on that spaceship too.".

I explained to him the various uses of the word man but couldn't help but be proud he was bright enough to pick up on something like that and I couldn't help but recall the roaring cheer and gleeful clapping when Kirk uttered "one" in place of "man" for the first time one of the cinematic releases (even if it had been in TNG for years at that point).

2 comments:

  1. Ever read Hofstadter's "A Person Paper on Purity in Language"? Brilliant take on the subject.

    https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

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