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From: regard@ttidcc.UUCP (Adrienne Regard)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: "them" vs. "it" vs. "he" vs. "she"
Message-ID: <378@ttidcc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Apr-85 16:59:57 EST
Article-I.D.: ttidcc.378
Posted: Thu Apr 25 16:59:57 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Apr-85 03:16:13 EST
Organization: TTI, Santa Monica, CA.
Lines: 32

>     The french don't even have a word similar to 'it', I only had three
>years in high school, but as far as I know, they have to use words which
>mean 'him' and 'her' even when they are referring to objects, not people.
>I think a frenchman would be stuck saying 'give him my memo' or 'give her
>my memo', just as we are.
>     I don't know if the french ever wish their language provided the
>ability to distinguish people from objects with pronouns, but *I* certainly
>wished it did when I was trying to learn it.  Sentences like 'Give it
>to her.' could translate literally to 'Give him to her.' or 'Give her to
>her.', depending on the gender of the referenced object.  Obviously, this
>was a great source of confusion to someone who hasn't figured out whether
>the direct object comes before or after the indirect object.
>--
>Jeff Sonntag
>ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
>    "This statement is true."

This statement is not true.  I guess those three years were a lost cause.
Il and elle only refer to "him" and "her" when they refer to people.
When they refer to nouns, both il and elle are as "it" as can be.  French
IS a language that has evolved "gender" for nouns, regardless of their
"apparent" gender (someone recently pointed out some interesting oddities -
female body parts that take the masculine gender and vice versa).  This
is a FEATURE of the language (as opposed to a BUG (-:) that grew out of
it's Latin roots (which DOES have a genderless third person pronoun "on").

Gender is not the same thing as Sex.  Gender in nouns is recognizably
different from the sex indicated by pronouns.  A frenchperson knows the
difference between "she" = the chair and "she" = a woman.  Just as an
englishperson knows the difference between "it" = the report and "them"
= Bill's secretary.  Sometimes "they" don't like to admit it, but you
can trip them in conversation nearly every time.