Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> Nonsense. It's just that since French doesn't have a neuter gender, we are
> obliged to assign gender to everything, even things strictly inanimate, and
> that makes it easier for us to personify things. But it doesn't say
> anything about the things themselves being animate.
As I thought, Sapir-Whorf at work again. *G*
> Dutch has
> not problem using this demonstrative pronoun as a kind of epicene animate
> third person personal pronoun.
Does this mean that they can use it where colloquial English uses
"singular they" or he/she? I.e., an epicene way of referring to humans?
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