Not sure where you grew up culturally, but that seems like a very foreign concept to me personally. We use “boys”/“guys” and “girls” to demote young men and women. No one here would get the idea to use “male” and “female”, which to our ears are purely biological words.
Here in Australia we use male/female all the time.
I physically cringe when I see Americans say stuff like “woman politician” instead of “female politician”. It sounds so grammatically wrong, that you legit sound like a caveman impression (ex. “Grug go car”).
Having said that, we would also never refer to women as females. There’s some grammar rules that dictate when we use either, but female is certainly the more common term.
Yeah, to my ESL ears man/woman are nouns, not adjectives, and using them as adjectives comes off as childish.
That said, “female X” can also sound clumsy, if it’s implied that a bare X is male, e.g. “politician” and “female politician”, vs male and female politician. There was a twitter account calling itself a “male programmer” which took the piss out of that trope.
Well, English is not the native language where I’m from. So perhaps it must be the cultural context for the word “man”? I mean, we don’t use the words “male-female” much outside biological contexts as well… I’ve just rarely seen anyone use the words “man/woman” for anyone our age (we’re young adults for context).
Not sure where you grew up culturally, but that seems like a very foreign concept to me personally. We use “boys”/“guys” and “girls” to demote young men and women. No one here would get the idea to use “male” and “female”, which to our ears are purely biological words.
Here in Australia we use male/female all the time.
I physically cringe when I see Americans say stuff like “woman politician” instead of “female politician”. It sounds so grammatically wrong, that you legit sound like a caveman impression (ex. “Grug go car”).
Having said that, we would also never refer to women as females. There’s some grammar rules that dictate when we use either, but female is certainly the more common term.
Yeah, to my ESL ears man/woman are nouns, not adjectives, and using them as adjectives comes off as childish.
That said, “female X” can also sound clumsy, if it’s implied that a bare X is male, e.g. “politician” and “female politician”, vs male and female politician. There was a twitter account calling itself a “male programmer” which took the piss out of that trope.
100%, I also hate the stupid shit like “actress” as if we need a whole new fucking word when you can just say actor for everyone.
Well, English is not the native language where I’m from. So perhaps it must be the cultural context for the word “man”? I mean, we don’t use the words “male-female” much outside biological contexts as well… I’ve just rarely seen anyone use the words “man/woman” for anyone our age (we’re young adults for context).