Subject: Re: Beginners course From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 2000/02/13 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3159473417014873@naggum.no> * Michael Dingler <mdingler@mindless.com> | Linguists to the rescue, isn't this more like the norm and English | is one of the few exceptions? well, real Norwegian doesn't suffer from this confusion of inanimate with animate objects, and usually restricts "he" and "she" to human beings. inanimate objects and in most circumstances also animals are referenced with our equivalents of "it", which may be "den" (male/female gender) or "det" (neuter gender). incidentally, furriners get this wrong all the time, so it is clearly complex. #:Erik