Tuesday September 4, 2012
‘Man’ or ‘a man’
By YONG AH YONG
IT was reported that Neil Armstrong, the first man who stepped on the moon surface, made an error by saying “That’s one small step for man, one giant step for mankind.” (e.g. Sin Chew Daily, Aug 27, 2012)
He should have said “That’s one small step for a man.”
“A man” means one person or an individual, whereas “Man” means mankind or all human beings.
He’s only human: Was the late Neil Armstrong grammatically wrong when he said, ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant step for mankind’? It was also mentioned that Neil Armstrong had clarified that he did say “a man”, not just ‘man”. Perhaps the article “a” had not been heard clearly due to some technical problem with the outer space transmission system.
Whether Armstrong said “a man” or ‘man’ does not really matter. His achievement is something we should be proud of in any language.
I have always told my students: Human beings are undoubtedly intelligent. They can send astronauts to the moon and machines to Mars. But they are rather unwise – they can’t even live in peace and harmony on Earth.”
Yong Ah Yong, a former Utar lecturer, is now editing business and academic documents as a freelancer.
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