I need little help to clear 1 thing.

Hello Respected Teachers and Seniors.

I am From Pakistan and i need to ask 1 thing.

My Son is student of Class 3 and few days back his teacher ask him for oral and written test on Story " A Greedy Dog"

Unfortunately story in his book is Written as :

Once there was a hungry dog.
It went here and there to look for food.
It reached a butcher shop.
It stole a piece of meat here.
It started running towards the jungle.
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Usage of It instead He was shocking for me and i itself replace It with HE and ask my son to write He instead It.

But it was again painful for me when His teacher cut his marks with marking wrong word "He" and ask him to correct it with "It"

Now my point is this can we use "it " logically with Human or Alive things ?
Please guide me with some references.

Thanks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rizwan Saeed

Hello Respected Teachers and Seniors.

I am From Pakistan and i need to ask 1 thing.

My Son is student of Class 3 and few days back his teacher ask him for oral and written test on Story " A Greedy Dog"

Unfortunately story in his book is Written as :

Once there was a hungry dog.
It went here and there to look for food.
It reached a butcher shop.
It stole a piece of meat here.
It started running towards the jungle.
=========

Usage of It instead He was shocking for me and i itself replace It with HE and ask my son to write He instead It.

But it was again painful for me when His teacher cut his marks with marking wrong word "He" and ask him to correct it with "It"

Now my point is this can we use "it " logically with Human or Alive things ?
Please guide me with some references.

Thanks

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Welcome to Using English, Rizwan Saeed. We don't know the sex of the dog in the story so we refer to it as "it". This is the normal to refer to animals.

But Everywhere on Internet , Story is written with "He"

No One uses "It" in story.

But Usage of "It" with non-human things as per my knowledge.

There are two ways of looking at this.

A male of the genus canis lupus is called a 'dog'; the female is called a 'bitch''. So if you interpret 'dog' strictly in the story, it's 'he'.

On the other hand, either a bog or a bitch of that genus is commonly referred to as a dog, and these two standards can coexist quite happily:

A: I have a dog.
B: Is it a dog or a bitch?
A: A dog.

B is not correcting A; and A's answer does not imply 'It's a dog - are you deaf or just stupid?' ;-)

People who know a particular animal (its owner, for example) often use a gender-specific personal pronoun. Other people use 'it'. People who are well-disposed towards dogs often make the effort to find out which gender-specific pronoun is appropriate. Often it is obvious from the name or the physique. My father-in-law, for example had a dog named 'Butch' - who was obviously male. When Butch died he was replaced by 'Donna' - obviously female.

b

Afterthought: you need a little help. From the context your meaning was obvious, but 'I need little help' could mean the opposite of what you meant, as in 'My English is really quite good. I need little help'.

b

For what it's worth, the "here" in the line about stealing the meat from the butcher is more objectionable to me than "it."

That should be "There, he stole a piece of meat" or perhaps "He stole a piece of meat [from] there" but not "here."