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

Christophe writes about babies:

>Indeed. I hear it all the time. Quite practical, although I still
>have difficulties using it (since in French using a demonstrative as
>3rd person personal pronoun to refer to a person who be rather rude).
>
>On a related note, In Dutch "kind": child and "baby" (yeah, they
>just borrowed the word) are neuter, and people don't mind using
>"het" to refer to a child or a baby. *That* is difficult to get used
>to (in my idea, babies are quite animate, and thus when hearing
>"het" in a conversation about a baby I don't automatically associate
>the pronoun with the baby. So I try to understand by context what
>people are talking about, and when I realise they were simply
>referring to the baby they usually changed the conversation subject.
>Sigh...).
I can't speak for others, but I have no problem referring to babies
as "it" in English. One can use it for humorous deprecatory effect of
course, and I do ("How cute, take it away."), but one can also use it
legitimately, especially when the baby is extremely right-outta-the
-womb young, when you don't know the gender (Someone bungs a picture
of a sleeping newborn at you -- "Oh, isn't it cute! How old is it?";
you see a baby having a spaz at the mall -- "Why is it crying?") Once
gender is established, well, yeah, then it gets a little rude.

Kou