student asking question

Why does he use "she" for the bone thing?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Great question. Whenever you see something like this, where gender is being used for an inanimate noun, it is called metaphorical gender. The use of this is generally for poetic effect in order to personify objects or show a strong emotional connection with them, especially when calling an object "it" seems too cold. Since English does not have grammatical gender, English speakers are able to use whichever gender they personally choose in a situation. Generally people will choose based on what image they want to give the object In the clip, I would guess that he chose the female pronoun because he wants to express beauty or affection to the bones. It may also be that he has previous knowledge that when the dinosaur was alive it was a female dinosaur. Ex: A. Is this your new car? B. Yes! Isn't she beautiful? Ex: A. We have to open the safe. B. He's going to be hard to crack.

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