A question about pronoun "it" in this sentence

This is the impersonal form. It's just a syntax we use. We can also say I won't say who they are. What your teacher means is that you can't use "it" as a demonstrative pronoun for a person. If you did this to an able-bodied person it's to dehumanize them. It's also rude. Sometimes people call newborns it, and not in a mean way, because they can't do anything independently yet. It carries the implication of being inanimate.

"It" in English is also often used just as a placeholder for a concept that was introduced earlier. There isn't much consistency to the way sentences are constructed in different languages and English grammar is weird, so don't worry about studying this. Just listen for it. Sorry if the words I used here are a bit difficult for a learner, probably just stick this in google translate. I just want to be accurate.

When answering the door one usually says "Who is it?" rather than "Who are you?". In a similar vein, when referring to someone whose identity is concealed or unknown you might hear something like "I can't tell you who it is," or "I don't know who it is." You'll also hear "Who is that?" The easiest way to think about it is to think of it as inquiring about one's identity, not one's self.

For your second question, if you're not sure on the gender of the subject, then use the pronoun "they". "Someone left **their** keys here." "I don't know my new boss, but I've heard **they're** strict." You may find older writing use something different like the generic masculine or "he or she", and naysayers today that "they" is strictly incorrect, but that doesn't reflect modern usage today.

The teacher's rule applies to specified entities. It is very rude to refer to a identified person as "it", but that doesn't apply to situations where you don't so much as want to hint at who you are talking about. There you can use the singular "they" or you can go with "it". These days using "he" or "man" to refer to persons who might in fact be female is out of style but there are still people who are uncomfortable using "they" to refer to a single person of unspecified gender even though the history of doing so goes back centuries, so instead they can go with "it" as long as it isn't a specifically identified person.

Using “it” in “I’m not going to say who *it* is” is fine because “it” refers to the abstract concept of the person’s identity, not the person themselves. English often uses “it” as a neutral placeholder for unknowns, like in “Who is it?”

It's valid to use "it", it's just less polite than using "they", but since they're not addressing anyone specifically, it's not a big deal.

Impressed by all the wrong/misleading answers. "It" here means nothing. It's called [expletive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_\(linguistics\)) "it", and it's the same "it" we use when talking about the weather ("It's raining.") and is similar to how we use "there" ("There's a man at the door."). It is *not* "a weird exception" or some different, special way to refer to a person. It isn't referring to anything *at all*; we only need them in English because we *always* need a subject syntactically, and English is very strict about that. > It's the mailman. > It's *who?* > Who is it?

I want to add that there is one rare exception which is that a very small number of people use "it" as a sort of neopronoun, and prefer for people to use it to refer to them. I've known two people who do this. Usually it's because they take on the identity of some kind of non-human person like a robot or a cat. This is, again, quite rare.

"say who they are" or "they were"

"It" can refer to people, and is often the only grammatically correct pronoun for a sentence that's referring to a specific person, but in cases where you can use other pronouns, "it" can be seen as rude.

“It” is a pronoun you use when you are unsure of the gender of the recipient. However, it is considered rude to refer to a person as “it” to their face. When someone you can’t see knocks on your door, you can’t see them and you know nothing about who’s on the other side of the door, so you say “who is it?”

I feel like "who they are" flows better but if someone said "who it is" I wouldn't think twice about it

It seems the actual question has been answered so I'll skip that. You would use "they/them/theirs" for an unknown gender. So, I wanted to add that if you were uncomfortable with using "it" like this, it can be reworded as "who they are" rather than "who it is".

I think we should use "they" in this case of indeterminate gender, and use "is" or "are" to establish if it's a singular person or plural. For example, "Someone failed, but I'm not saying who they is." (English teachers hate this one weird trick!)

In this case, "it" is referring to an omitted word. That is, the full sentence would be "someone failed the test, but I won't tell you whose identity it is." English will often vomit words or ideas which are implied from sentences., or, as in this case, collapse them into shorter clauses, or even single words.

"It is" is an idiomatic phrase in this case. The word "IT" doesn't refer to anything, Who was on the phone? It was Jane. Who was on the phone? It was my parents. "It was" (past tense of "it is") does not describe the person. The proof is that it does not change from singular to plural even if there are multiple people. "It is"/"it was" are just two words that are used together when answering the question "who?" It's like when you say "DO you like ice cream?" The subject is YOU. The object is ICE CREAM. The verb is LIKE. So what is DO? It's just included because that's how questions work in English.

The verb to be needs to have a subject and when you put no subjuct with it, you have to use "it" in place of the subject Like in: It is raining. (Who is raining? You can't really answer that, but you still need a subject, so you put "it")

>TITLE: A question about pronoun "it" in this sentence > * _Someone failed the test but im not gonna say who it is._ . **TLDR:** The *"it"* in your example is a dummy pronoun *"it"* that's functioning as the subject of a truncated *it*-cleft construction, where the clause _"who it is"_ is a subordinate interrogative clause. Consider: 1. _"Someone failed the test but im not gonna say who it is."_ <-- OP's original example. 2. _"Someone failed the test, but I'm not going to say who it is."_ <-- a standard English variant corresponding to OP's original example. 3. _"Someone failed the test, but I'm not going to say [who it is]."_ <-- "[...]" marks the truncated *it*-cleft construction. 4. _"Someone failed the test, but I'm not going to say [who it is that failed the test]."_ <-- "[...]" marks the (untruncated) *it*-cleft construction. As to the it-cleft, consider the following: 1. _"Sue failed the test."_ <-- ordinary clause. 2. _"It is Sue that/who failed the test."_ <-- an *it*-cleft that can correspond to the ordinary clause #1. 3. _"It is who that failed the test?"_ <-- interrogative clause with interrogative phrase in situ. 4. _"Who is it that failed the test?"_ <-- interrogative clause with subject-aux inversion. 5. _"... who it is that failed the test."_ <-- a subordinate interrogative *it*-cleft, which has no subject-aux inversion due to it being a subordinate clause. 6. _"Someone failed the test, but I'm not going to say [who it is ~~that failed the test~~]."_ <-- similar to the standard English variant corresponding to the OP's original example, which uses a truncated *it*-cleft. 7. _"Someone failed the test, but I'm not going to say [who it is]."_ <-- cleaned up. Notice how this #7, and also the OP's original example, can be interpreted as meaning: * _"Someone failed the test, but I'm not going to say [the answer to the question 'Who is it ~~that failed the test~~?']."_ You might be interested in searching about for more info on the ***it*-cleft** construction.

It's the same 'it' as 'it's raining', kind of. It's a general 'it' that that is doing some grammatical work to patch things together. In the same vein, il French you could say 'c'est qui' to mean 'who is it'. You don't have to say 'il est qui'.

It's rude to call people "it", but sometimes it's difficult to avoid, if you have no idea if they prefer "he" or "she". It's generally OK, if you are talking about an abstract, unnamed person. For example, "I have a missed call; I don't know who it was." It would be very rude to say "It came to work late again today", about a person. If you did not know whether they were "he" or "she", many people default to "he". Some people don't like that, but we really don't have a better word. Some (few) people say "xe", but that sounds quite silly to most of us. *In general,* if you get the gender wrong, people will correct you. For example, if I say "This is Chris; he works at Walmart". Chris might say "Actually, I'm a she", and I'll apologize and start using her preferred pronoun.

I'm not going to say who they are maybe?

This situation is not insulting but as you said sometimes using "it" for people does have a negative connotation. I'd suggest just using the gender neutral pronouns "they" instead so you don't mess up. For this it'd be, "...but I'm not going to say who *they are*."

"Who is it?" and "I (don't know/can't tell/can't see/won't tell you/etc) who it is" are valid when talking about a person or people who are visiting (or otherwise proximal but often not immediately present), or remotely communicating by phone or some other means. It's one of those weird exceptions.