pennypitstop wrote:... corrected my abysmal grammar and carried on the rest of the conversation in English
I've felt that the constant corrections gets old quickly. A collegue of mine has a habit of interupting a conversation to correct my (no so often) mistake concerning 'de' and 'het'. I tell him that for starters the interuption is not so great in keeping the conversation moving, but if I were to think about the specific word to use, I'd take forever to say things and everyone will get bored waiting.
Point is that as a native english speaker I've not really every had to bother with gender related words and I'm not going to start now for all the hassle it brings - people losing interest real fast due to the time needed to figure out what gender a word has.
To me it is a bit like Goldenmanes Rule #3 for Public Discourse. If you trip over such a minor error rather than concentrate on the matter at hand, piss off and stop wasting my time.