Nope, I was the only one that drank. It was usually during social dinners in conferences, and always by native speakers. I never stopped to think “hey, I’m speaking better” 
they just told me.
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Yeah, sounds like Josef Hader. 
Ok. In that case: Try a tranquilizer (for example valerian or a tea) and see if that helps too.
Pro tip: you can say it in english to everybody you don´t know the gender of. It = the child is perfectly okay.
Is that really correct in terms of gender mainstreaming? For example male and female people would like to be named as such today? And what about aliens? No, no. I’ll write it all down. I don’t want to wake up one morning with an axe in my brain just because I forgot a gender…
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I´m sure there is a carticarture already of an university that has a toilet for “the third gender” which is full of tumbleweeds.
On current Simpsons you´ve got me completly stumped.
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You could also just use ‘they’…
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Yes, in plural.
I remember one of the first lessons we learned at school was to no find the following exchange weird:
“Is this your father?” “Yes, it is” I know it´s a subject object thing. But to a german it is weird to refer to someone as “it” when you clearly know the gender and say anything but “Yes, he is”.
What we didn´t learn was the odd habit of some people to assign gender (mostly female) to certain objects like, ships, cars…or guns…
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You can use it in singular too. To use it on @Someone’s example: ‘I don’t think they would be able to follow the story.’
Yes, that is very weird (and old-fashioned).
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Okay when refering to children in general. But what about a specific child you do not know the gender of?
Seems still to be very popular in the states.
That’s what I meant by ‘singular’. I was referring to one child in that example. I think that’s why we use it - when you don’t know the gender. For example, if I was talking about a child I heard a story about and didn’t know them, I might say ‘apparently they hit someone with a catapult’.
I think we started doing it to avoid being sexist or making assumptions about an unknown gender. Then again the Oxford English Dictionary suggests it’s been a thing since the 18th century.
I think some people object to using it like that but it is very common. I don’t know if @tasse-tee has any thoughts.
I would always prefer to use “they” over “it” for a child. I think me and my friends have had this conversation before - if one of them randomly uses “it” for a child, it’s likely that another one of them will pick up on it and ask if it’s the right word to use.
I thought Calypso had problems the other day trying to move all posts to another topic. If more of us try to split up threads it could get messy.
Let’s learn a little bit of italian. The importance of the accents.
Which month are we now?
- April
How we say “April” in italian?
- Aprile
WOW, it’s very similar to English, though.
But pay very attention to the accent, because if you made a mistake, the same word has a completely different meaning.
So:
Month of April --> Apr ì le (accent on I, not on the “A” like in english)
… because Aprile, means “Open them”!!
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So what about this thing:
?
Eheh: Apr ì lia
Apr is a valid Italian word? 
I would have more guessed that it is like “Canal Grande” vs. “Canale Grande”…?
Uhm, I wrote Apr [space] i with accent [space] le
It was meant to be a single word: Aprìle (with the accent on i)
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