Originally Posted by
airtren
First, for what is worth: the French pronouns ("prenomes"), like the nouns they replace, have in French two genres: masculine, or feminine. "il' is the masculine form, so it would translate into the English "he" for a person, or "it" for an object or animal.
In this case, I have NO doubts, that the PNF's ""il vient ou pas" - "is he coming or not?" is "Lonewoolf_50's" interpretation, in terms of referring to the Captain.
Sorry,
airtren, but you obviously don't live in France.
You should have SOME doubts....
In French it's "un avion", so an aircraft is "il".
I've had regular problems explaining this to anglophone firends...
"Why do the French refer to a Concorde as "he" or "it", rather than "she" ?"
That said, you may have a valid point... "il vient ou pas" is more likely to refer to the captain than to the response of the aircraft. I would have expected "ça vient ou pas ?" in the latter case (still too colloquial to translate unequivoqually without the full context)