this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Well...
You can use "they" without being insulting, as it still presumes personhood, but if you call someone "it" you're dehumanizing them and stripping personhood from them, as "it" is used for objects and things, not people. It sounds like what you're translating would be closer to "it" in English than "them" or "they".
Yes but "it" in polish is specifically belonging to the neutral gender. There's a bit more nuance there if you add context of sentence but it's pretty much build in. Polish equivalent of "they" or "them" is specifically 3rd person plural and cannot be used in singular and in 2nd person.
AFAIK English's they or them is supposed to be plural only, but we butchered that a long time ago.