In Chinese, verbally the world for he, she, and it are all the same pronunciation. It is only differentiated in writing.
Ta?
Using “it” to refer to human beings feels super disrespectful to me. Dehumanizing much? 1992 called they want their attitudes about trans people back. Obviously if someone told me they prefer “it” pronouns I’d use them but I would feel gross about it.
Can’t be dehumanizing if you use it for all humans XD
Why would you feel gross respecting a trans person’s preferred pronouns? If a trans person wants to be thought of as an object, would you genuinely think of it as an object, or would you think of it as a person but still call it by its preferred pronouns? Because the second option would cause cognitive dissonance and might be the reason you’d feel gross.
Don’t learn Finnish I guess.
No gendered pronouns and we honestly use “it” (se) as a pronoun. No, I would never use it in English unless I meant to purposefully dehumanise someone, but in Finnish it’s just the normal colloquial version of a personal pronoun, whereas “hän” is a 3rd person pronoun that’s more formal, (but also non-gendered) . Pets usually get to be referred to as “hän” with the more formal personal pronoun, weirdly enough.
Don’t read Lois McMaster Bujolds “Vorkosigan Saga” On of the bio engineered races preferred “it” when being gendered.
I’ve run into this a while ago but I’m not sure what to make of it. https://aria.dog/barks/on-being-a-thing/
Based based based based based
…Waow
Holy shit… You can have domains that end in .dog?
and .pizza, .gay
there are lots of fun ones
“It” is personally my favorite neutral pronoun, but it has so much cultural baggage attached to it that it doesn’t feel like a viable option. Why does a squirrel or a ficus or a robot get to be called “it” by default, but not a person? It isn’t fair.
It’s your choice. Do what you want. Damn the haters to sheol.
it’s generally used to describe non-sentient things…
Also, using only it gets confusing when trying to determine what “it” refers to in a given sentence…
You should have answered with more empathy for its feelings. Jesus Christ told us to love our neighbours.
What’s not sentient about a squirrel?
Can you give an example of how “it” is confusing? Like “It met its friend for coffee,” sounds fine to me. “It put on a warm jacket since it was cold out,” uses multiple senses of the word, but it still reads fine to me.
“They” is mildly confusing in narratives because it can be hard to distinguish whether one or multiple characters are being described, but it’s not an insurmountable problem.
I think it might be most confusing when someone talks about someone who uses “it/its” pronouns: my initial assumption would be that they’re trying to dehumanise it unless I was already previously aware of it’s pronown preference.
that’s a good point, I think it depends on the person, but some people tend to just assume the squirrels gender in most instances rather than saying “it”.
I have an nb friend who’s Finnish. They prefer It. I had to explain that as a white native english speaker, we have shat the bed waaayyy too hard to use that one in our language.
Tell your friend a follower of Christ who speaks native English says “it” is valid.
I mean, in casual spoken finnish, “it” dominates. The third person singular for people “hän” is already gender neutral, but I guess we prefer not to make assumptions about anyone’s personhood :D. Or maybe it (se) just rolls off the tongue more conveniently.
Yah, i get why they prefer using it and in Finnish it’s fine. In English it’s…Very much not. It’s a dehumaniser. Was an interesting conversation.
I think it has a lot to do with how it conjugates, “sen” and “sillä” is quicker than “hänen” and “hänellä”.
Also funnily enough many people use “hän” when talking about pets and other animals whilst still using “se” when talking about people. “Hän” feels a bit stiff and formal when talking about people.
“Hän” feels like thee thou in English to me, way too old timey and formal.
It (se) is neutral and relaxed
“Thou” is actually the informal alternative to “you”. It came to be seen as insulting and its usage was dropped.
Yeah, I think it’s to make sure that the animal in question is being recognized as an individual, whereas for people that’s taken for granted.
Turkish has no gender specific pronouns so this is every Turkish speaker I guess
Not even for people? I dont know why that sounds so strange but it does.
Neither does finnish
There is only one third person singular pronoun (“O”) used for people (regardless of gender) and objects alike.
Also the word for “they” is “onlar” which is just “o” with the prular suffix “lar” attached, that’s like using “its” to mean “them.”
Huh once again, hungarian is very similar to turkish. We have “ő” for that. No aninimity or gender distinction. Tho we do have this, that and a third one which i guess translates to yonder? But yeah in some constructions you can specify aninimity with them.
This is why everything is a little shit to me. I’m just getting all of them in one combined s/h/it word.
You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?
Gotta reuse fiber to hit the daily recommended.
I would guess that yes, that’s (h) it
I could be an it. A good little toy.
Average blahaj user
:3
“A toy? A Lego set??”, she asked excitedly, and wagged her tail.
“It puts the lotion on it’s skin…”
*its
Tits*
I never get mad at “it” because it gives me flashbacks to Shale from Dragon Age Origins and I absolutely love her. she’s amazing.
Oh holy fuck I’m rolling!
How have I not seen this image of Radcliffe before? He looks absolutely deranged!
The back story is that he was elbowed in the face on the way to the car, and probably had stage makeup on.
https://chatterbusy.removed/2013/07/daniel-radcliffe-appears-exhausted-with.html?m=1
Thanks for the context!
Why did that word get censored?
Which word?
Thanks
Hey kid… wanna buy some drugs?
