Humans are Weird: assigning pronouns to random objects/creatures
My sister was carrying a box around, and instead of saying "be careful", I shouted "don't drop him! He's a fragile little man." All my friends do the same thing to me, taking about moths and plants like sentient creatures: "oh Robert? Yeah, I had to trim his leaves yesterday". So how would aliens react to this extension of pack bonding?
......
Kara, Arjun, and Do'Kuron were taking turns at the ship's helm, with Arjun currently at the controls. The debris field meant they had to pilot manually, and since none of the other crew members volunteered to help out, they were the ones chosen to be stuck there for at least the next eight hours.
Kara and Arjun were relatively new, and the first humans Do'Kuron had met. During their first meeting, he was concerned about how they would react to his appearance. Most species were put off by his height, bristly black fur, and clubbed tail.
But not the humans. As soon as they saw him, they introduced themselves, and started asking questions about him, his homeworld, and even his bonded, Do'Fena and Do'Taro. He had never met a race so inquisitive, and so unafraid.
"Oh! Watch out for him!" Kara said to Arjun, snapping Do'Kuron back to the present situation.
"Kara, who do you want Arjun to watch out for? We three are the only sentient creatures within my scope of vision." Can humans detect life forms unknown to others? Do'Kuron wondered. Kara laughed and bared her teeth, a sign of happiness that Do'Kuron was glad to see at least one other species shared.
"No, I was just referring to the asteroid on our left."
"Does it have some form of gender marker that I was unaware of?"
"Ha! No, it's just... I dunno, we just have this thing we do called personification, where you assign sentient traits to non-sentient things. Or that's how my English teacher explained it anyway, ya know?"
"I believe I understand. Thank you, Kara."
"No problem!" She replied. Do'Kuron smiled to himself, excited, in a strange way, to make his own first entry to the human manual.