Talk:human

Latin humanus as noun
Has Latin humanus really a noun meaning? Is it a medieval usage? Andres 14:02, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * According to apparently not, though it could be medieval (I don't have medieval Latin sources offhand to check with)  —Muke Tever


 * According to your source, humani in Lucretius' natura humanis omnia sunt paria could count as meaning 'men, mortals'. Andres 23:07, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Homo (sapiens)
Are these words related to human? Homo means wis or something in Greek. Smiddle /  T  C  @  18:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Both and  come from. (I'm sorry it took an entire decade for you to get an answer.) AutisticCatnip (talk) 11:19, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Second definition

 * 1) Having the nature or attributes of a human being

Would this cover things like "his story was very human"? That is emotional, causing empathy (etc.) I know I haven't expressed that too well. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:33, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Why in English other beings "having the nature or attributes of a human being" (like Vulcans, Romulans, Trill) are not styled "human"; and instead "human" equates to "Earthling"?--Manfariel (talk) 14:34, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Pronunciation
The IPA pronunciation for human is described as. Unfortunately, the ç does not appear on the IPA page.


 * It is an IPA symbol, but nobody has bothered to include it in that particular page. It is a voiceless palatal fricative, like the German 'ch' in or the Japanese 'h' in hito. It is the palatalized version of /x/ (loch, machen, ach). —Stephen (Talk) 14:19, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Is there a citation for this pronunciation? I personally find the /ç/ quite surprising (I haven't ever heard of that consonant being a feature of GA or RP), so I believe it would be worthwhile to provide a source. AutisticCatnip (talk) 11:23, 31 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It isn't /ç/, but [ç], meaning that this is not a phoneme in English but an allophone of /h/ before /j/. And since it's not a phoneme, it's not usually included in IPA transcriptions of English. But there's nothing unusual about it; [ç] is the normal pronunciation in most English accents and that has been understood for a long time.
 * However, some speakers say, losing the [j]. In that case, [ç] should actually be considered a phoneme in its own right.

only human
be only human is an idiom, right? --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:21, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Etymology
References to humans as opposed to human beings became predominant in AmE about 1978 and in BrE about 1985. --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:35, 5 September 2021 (UTC)