Can it be omitted?

The occasion had developed into a situation that we could no longer ignore

ocasion is somthing you plan, birthday wedding of funeral.

had developed into a situastion that we found hard to ignore.

has developed into a situastion that cant be ignored.

if you ignore this situation any longer, it will totaly ruin the occasion

hmtonyan occasion that we find hard to ignore.

Without it is more common. That's my guess.

CJ

CalifJim

hmtonyan occasion that we find hard to ignore.

Without it is more common. That's my guess.

CJ


Is this technically wrong, even though it spoken and written as such?

The dictionary gives this single definition for 'find' when functioning intrasitively:

To come to a legal decisio

You've got the wrong end of the stick. This is transitive find. occasion is the D.O.

to find an occasion (to be) hard to ignore.

CJ

The first sentence, the one with the 'it', sounds extremely wrong to me.

That's my input.

What if it's stated like this?

We find it hard to ignore this occasion.

CJ

Sounds good to me.

I asked the same question in another forum. A native speaker in London says both are natural.

They both sound completely natural. There's no reason for preferring one or the other. When you put them next to each other, it looks as if one is the same as the other except for an extra 'it', so the 'it' looks redundant; but I see no good reason to omit redundant words anyway.

hmtonyA native speaker in London says both are natural.

Yes. That's a reasonable answer -- except for the comments about redundancy; normally we are advised not to write redundancies. I happen to think that the it is not redundant anyway, however. It just originates in a different grammatical pattern.

to find it hard to ignore an occasion.
vs.