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Is "female" offensive? (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I am not a native English speaker and I have sometimes referred to people as male and female (as that is what I have been taught) but I have received some backlash in some cases, especially for the word "female", is there some negative thought in the word which I am unaware of?

I don't know if this is the best place to ask, if it's not appropriate I have no problem to delete it ^^

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Because fluent speakers of a language know the rules even if they don't understand them. Why can you have a big green dog but not a green big dog? Because that's the way the language works.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

To be slightly more specific, you can have a "green big dog", but it does not convey the same idea as a "big green dog". The latter is by far the more normal, and it conveys any dog which is both big and green. The former implies the existence of "big dog" as a specific known thing, like "big dog" is a category of its own more than merely a dog that is big.

As a general rule though, yes, follow the adjective order guidelines. There's some fuzziness with it, but "opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun" should be used.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

Yeah, but if I ask a third grader which way is right, they'll know and they won't be able to tell you why. This is normal.