Sini Tuulia on Nostr: Finnish is generally gender neutral anyway, apart from words like fireman etc. but ...

Finnish is generally gender neutral anyway, apart from words like fireman etc. but it's also funny to me that you won't necessarily know if someone is talking about a single entity that is a human, a plant, a cow, a dog... But you'll almost invariably know when it's a cat!

Anyway. The whole "hän" pronoun is apparently a clerical invention because religious people wanted god to be referred to with a more fancy word than any old people. And Finns immediately went: Ah yes, use this word for cats and/or deeply sarcastically, then!