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underproofed ganbold@ganbold (2026-09-08 19:13:31)
so, japanese user.

what makes 人 a 人間 ? 
what is 間 in the first place?
what happen if 人間 lost 間?
---Reply---
Dèndy@dendy@nou.fai.st (2026-09-08 19:39:16)
@ganbold There's a 秋宗屋 ゆっくり video that I like that explains the whole history of the term https://youtu.be/LipMrNTOgEg

But basically it's 人 (person) + 間 (space (between), interval) so it used mean "The World" that people live in, the space where people reside, then from that it kinda drifted to mean the people itself but with a focus on the characteristic of an entity to posses humanity more than being a specific person, kinda like "person" vs "human being" I guess

人 is a 人間 the same way a person is a human being and I guess you could play around the term like "その人はもう人間じゃない！" as in "they have lost their humanity" or "that person can no longer be called a human", so that's what happens if 人間 lost 間 maybe (?)

I'm no expert and no native so yeah, that's at least my understanding

---Replies---

underproofed ganbold@ganbold (2026-09-08 20:33:02)
thank you!

yeah I was confused since I rarely use the term of ningen, but rather use hito and jinsei a lot. so when I see someone post similar sentence as mine, but use ningen over hito, I was like, oh, did I make a mistake here.

but yeah I like the playful word as well!

also bookmarked the video, thank you again!