• FiskFisk33@startrek.website
    505·
    9 months ago

    “man” as in human kind.

    I agree the linguistics here are unfortunate, but here we are, and that word, in that context, is normally gender neutral.

    Also, 28 day calendar probably means it’s the moon.

    • 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world
      20·
      9 months ago

      It’s important to note how we got here. In old English man just meant human. Wereman meant male and wifman meant female. Over time that “were” prefix got dropped and man now means male but the ambiguous meaning of humankind stuck around. In fact “human” comes from old french “of man”, again the non-gendered use of the word man.

      The point is to fix all these problems we just have to bring back the “were”. The progressive werewolves are way ahead of us on this issue.

    • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 months ago

      I’m not seeing a comment pointing out why 28 days isn’t a moon thing, so I’ll take a shot. If you watch new moon to new moon or full moon to full moon, it’s a 29.5 day cycle. It’s true, the moon’s orbit is only 28 days. However, that’s 360° of travel. We don’t track the moon against the stars for its cycle though, it’s tracked against the sun. A full moon sits opposite the sun, a new moon in line with the sun, etc. So, in that 28 day orbital period, the earth has also orbited about 1/13 of an orbit around the sun, changing the position of the sun against the stars . That means the moon has to travel an extra 28° of orbit to reach the new moon position again - about an extra day an a half.