Sarafina you ROCK!!!

[The Sonic God]

"It" is a word you would describe or identify an inanimate object. I see people refer to animals as "it," and that bothers me. Animals are not its.

[Haruka]

Agreed, The Sonic God

In my family my dog part of us. And i can't call him at "it"

[The Dishwasher]

Buuuut, sometimes you can refer to an animal as 'it' if you are not sure of its gender, e.g. the lion cub sat down...bla bla bla...and it blinked precicely twice.
Then this can be clarified, if you know that the cub in question is a he or a she.
I use this in literature a lot. And I see it written, too.
You can always tell from people's tone of voice whether they are being careless or arrogant when they refer to an animal as an 'it'. However, were I an animal, I would be offended if I were addressed as a he. For I am not.

[Shadowfox]

Should you people be a bit lesser strict about the grammar here... let me say it would make some environmental issues here in the forum much more smooth and warm.

[Yuichi]

I'm gonna add my allegiance to Sarafina's art here It's simply amazing - I can't do justice to its quality without sounding clichéd, so I'll leave it at
'The best - ever'.

I don't think I'll be taking a side in the 'animal gender/empathy' discussion though I just think that 'it' is a useful pronoun for when male/female animals look very similar.

[The Sonic God]

Where is Saffy, anyway?

[Shadowfox]

I do not actually know. I would be happier if she came more often to visit us here in EN forum.

[The Sonic God]

I'm the reason this forum exists... I think. It was kind of an idea that was brought up when I visited these forums for the first time, but forced to type up an English post in the Russian discussions.

I came here out of admiration for Sarafina's talent. I'm sure she's well aware of that.

[Shadowfox]

So if you hadn't asked Saffy about EN forum, it wouldn't have been created. Amazing, yet normal. I must say that I haven't come to this forum because I admire Saffy or TLK - I do admire everything ("everything" in its most precise meaning).
As for you The Sonic God - thank you.

[The Sonic God]

I figured that sooner or later, if I wanted to continue visiting these forums, I'd better start learning Russian. But I'm already in the process of learning German, which kind of interferes with me doing that (I have difficulty pronouncing any Russian or Ukraian words, anyway.)

[Kovur]

The Sonic God: Who need pronouncing? Just read and maybe write something...
But I warn you - russian is not the easyest language to learn...

and who need Ukrainian?

[The Sonic God]

The Sonic God: Who need pronouncing? Just read and maybe write something...
But I warn you - russian is not the easyest language to learn...

and who need Ukrainian?

Knowing how to speak as well as type is pretty simple. Just doing only one of the two is difficult.

Learning German for me was a bit easier than any other language, considering that my family history is from Germany (including a few uncles of mine whom spent time in Germany for military reasons.)

Russian, however, I cannot read or speak. The cyrillic appears to me as cryptic, so I have no mental reference of how any given character, word, or phrase should sound. I've visited a few sites with short Russian lessons, but they quickly faded from my mind because of lack of use. I mean no disrespect to the country, however.