Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Should I use the terms "people" "person" "man" and "woman" in fantasy setting?

You can just have the humans call each other He, She, Person, People. The other species' then have their own variations of those words. I assume, in your work, that the two species eventually meet...

posted 7y ago by Loser Like You‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:00:55Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26354
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Loser Like You‭ · 2019-12-08T06:00:55Z (over 4 years ago)
You can just have the humans call each other He, She, Person, People.

The other species' then have their own variations of those words. I assume, in your work, that the two species eventually meet up. You can then have the humans do something like the below to teach the reader more about the alien species.

_At dawn we were woken by who we assumed was our guide ... we learned our guide was a 'he' due to the scarcity of his clothing, and though we met others of his species we never saw what could be considered a female ... over the weeks working with our guide we began sharing bits and pieces of our language and culture._

_I introduced myself as Jack and my partner as Wendy, our guide slapped his chest hard and emitted a sound like "A'chug'nuz", though the 'nuz' sound was beyond the abilities of our body to pronounce. The guide responded to "Achug" and took no offense at our no-doubt butchering of his name. We were overwhelmed with relief that the Achug was intelligent - he immediately grasped that we were interested in his world and readily, even enthusiastically, pointed out things and spat their names out in his brutal language, sometimes giving a brief demonstration of how such things were used._

... you get the idea. You slowly but surely feed the audience bits and pieces of the other species' way of thinking and their culture and their language. If the language is foreign then you, as the author, decide what the aliens call each other and simplify it for the reader. This, I think, reduces the likelihood of grotesque infodumps which could be provided to the reader in a more immersive manner.

Edit: short answer: You CAN use he, she, they, people, person in reference to the alien species. Achug is a "He", if their are females they are "She" or "Her", a collective of individuals is a "They" or "Us" or "We". They may call themselves something like "A'Tirkma" which you can simplify to "Aturk" and then call the species "Aturks". "Man" and "Woman" are more human designations so I would recommend finding something else to call your alien species.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-01-28T15:41:48Z (about 7 years ago)
Original score: 5