• zaros@zaros.club
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      1 year ago

      Pfft, rest of the world should start following Finns on this and call everyone and everything ‘it’! Except pets for some reason.

    • Kleysley@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      As a non-native speaker, referring to a single teacher as “they” is not very intuitive (although correct)…

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        is not very intuitive though

        Yes it is. It’s completely intuitive. Native English speakers do it all the time every day. The singular “they” is used literally without conscious thought. The only time it becomes controversial is with transphobes talking about specific people who do not identify with their gender assigned at birth. Even transphobes use singular “they” without thinking in contexts like this OP where the gender is unknown. (Which is why their “but it’s bad grammar!” arguments fall flat.)

        • zaros@zaros.club
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          1 year ago

          I’d say what’s intuitive is very subjective. Most of a language tends to be intuitive to its native speakers, no matter how unintuitive it seems to someone else.

          To me the intuitive genderless option for “he/she” would be “it”. Coming from Finnish, it seems much more natural to have “it” include people instead of using “they” for both singular and plural. Or if using “they”, it would feel intuitive to say “they is” instead of “they are”.

        • Kleysley@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Just because people with years of experience with something don’t have to think about it, doesn’t mean it’s intuitive.

          As a non-native speaker, I don’t find it intuitive at all, even though I don’t have to think about it anymore. And as you can see by their post, OP didn’t find it intuitive either.

      • zaros@zaros.club
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        1 year ago

        I very much agree. Learning English as a foreign language, it feels very wrong to use plural for a single person. I’m still not quite used to it! Although, had I been taught that early on, I doubt it would feel any weirder than using “you are” for a single person.

  • spidertongue@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    “it’s” own money? I’m assuming you meant “its” but even then your teacher is an object?