Posted under General
Hey, so I've been wondering, but is there a specific reason why the gender tags use the words boy and girl in particular? (Ex. 1boy, 1girl, etc.)
I'm no native English speaker, but I was under the impression that those terms were used most particularly for individuals on the younger side of the spectrum.
Wouldn't it make more sense for these tags to use terms like male and female?
Flandre5carlet said:
Hey, so I've been wondering, but is there a specific reason why the gender tags use the words boy and girl in particular? (Ex. 1boy, 1girl, etc.)
I'm no native English speaker, but I was under the impression that those terms were used most particularly for individuals on the younger side of the spectrum.
Wouldn't it make more sense for these tags to use terms like male and female?
From a native American English speaker...
The terms male/female are more clinical/offical and not generally used in colloquial language. The more likely terms you'll hear are guy/girl, e.g. "there are 10 guys and 3 girls in our office". So the term girl doubles up as a description for younger females and also as a more informal term for females in general. Granted, the term boy is not often used to describe older males, however it's still not that strange, e.g. "one of the boys".
IMHO I see no problems with the terms, and it would cause more pain than it would be worth to change them to something else.
I prefer the 1boy and 1girl tags as they're more distinct than male / female as far as being able to quickly differentiate them, IMO. Plus, age doesn't matter for tagging gender unless it affects other things (like little_boy_admiral or the like).
Otherwise we might as well use man or woman instead of 1boy / 1girl and (x)men and (x)women instead.... I prefer to type less than more with tags as is.
