Getting third person pronouns mixed up?

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D0gbert
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19 Jul 2015, 2:22 am

I noticed lately (as now I am a lot more social + self aware than before) that I sometimes mix up third person pronouns. I used to attribute that to my mother tongue, as pronunciation wise, there is no difference between "he", "she" and "it" in Chinese.

Yet this has happened repeatedly. In fact, I sometimes have to make an effort to not mix them up. Once even managed to upset a really sensitive person...

Anyone else have that problem, either with pronouns or other words?!



jk1
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19 Jul 2015, 2:40 am

I hear it's fairly common among Chinese-speaking people for the reason you mentioned. Some Chinese-speaking coworkers have sometimes confused me because they suddenly start talking about "him" when they are talking about a woman.

I sometimes mix up words that have /ʌ/ or /æ/, such as flutter and flatter, us and ass, hug and hag etc. Mixing up /ʌ/ and /æ/ is fairly common among ESL people.