Re: Metrical Stress, Feet, Syllables, Genders, Email Servers etc.

Quoting Costentin Cornomorus <elemtilas@...>:

> --- Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...> wrote:
>
> > Some speakers will even use "it" for any
> > non-human, even a pet cat or dog (I associate
> > this with older speakers,
> > but that may be an erroneous impression).
>
> Many speakers (myself included) also refer to
> babies and small children as "it" as well. Until
> they're properly boys or girls (perhaps 2 or 3?)
> there's just no point.
Funny. In Swedish, the word for "child", namely _barn_, is grammatically
neuter (t-gender) and so has to be refered to as _det_ "it". But I'm hardly
the only speaker who'll go to some lengths to avoided refering to a specific
child as _det_. When speaking of a hypothetical child, the neuter pronoun
seems less out of place, and, of course, removes the need to specify sex,
which can be useful.

                                              Andreas