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Chinese pronouns[a] are pronouns in the Chinese languages. This article highlights Mandarin Chinese pronouns. There are also Cantonese pronouns and Hokkien pronouns.
Chinese pronouns differ somewhat from English pronouns and those of other Indo-European languages. For instance, there is no differentiation in the spoken language between "he", "she" and "it" (though a written difference was introduced after contact with the West), and pronouns are not inflected to indicate whether they are the subject or object of a sentence. Mandarin Chinese further lacks a distinction between the possessive adjective ("my") and possessive pronoun ("mine"); both are formed by appending the particle 的 de. Pronouns in Chinese are often substituted by honorific alternatives.
In Mandarin
| Person | Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 我 wǒ I, me | 我们 / 我們* wǒmen we, us (exclusive) | 咱们 / 咱們† zánmen we, us (inclusive) | |
| 2nd | 你 nǐ thou, you (informal) | 您 nín you (formal) | 你们 / 你們 nǐmen you (generic) | 您 nín you (formal) |
| 3rd | 他, 她, 它 tā he, him / she, her / it | 他们 / 他們, 她们 / 她們, 它们 / 它們 tāmen they, them | ||
- * 我们 / 我們 can be either inclusive or exclusive, depending on the circumstance where it is used.
- † 咱们 / 咱們 is mainly used by northern speakers.
Following the iconoclastic May Fourth Movement in 1919, and to accommodate the translation of Western literature, written vernacular Chinese developed separate pronouns for gender-differentiated speech, and to address animals, deities, and inanimate objects.
Throughout the 1920s, a debate continued between three camps: those that preferred to preserve the preexisting use of 他 without distinction between genders, those that wished to preserve the spoken non-gendered pronoun but introduce a new female pronoun 她 in writing, and those that wished to introduce a differently pronounced female pronoun 伊. The pronoun 伊 enjoyed widespread support in the 1920s and 1930s but lost out to 她 after the Chinese Civil War.[1] Currently, written pronouns are divided between the masculine human 他 (he, him), feminine human 她 (she, her), and non-human 它 (it), and similarly in the plural. This distinction does not exist in the spoken language, where moreover tā is restricted to animate reference; inanimate entities are usually referred to with demonstrative pronouns for 'this' and 'that'.[2]
Other, rarer new written pronouns in the second person are nǐ (祢 "you, a deity"), nǐ (你 "you, a male"), and nǐ (妳 "you, a female"). In the third person, they are tā (牠 "it, an animal"), tā (祂 "it, a deity"), and tā (它 "it, an inanimate object"). Among users of traditional Chinese characters, these distinctions are only made in Taiwanese Mandarin; in simplified Chinese, tā (它) is the only third-person non-human form and nǐ (你) is the only second person form. The third person distinction between "he" (他) and "she" (她) remain in use in all forms of written standard Mandarin.[3]
In the early 21st century, some members of genderfluid and queer Chinese online communities started using X也 and TA to refer to a generic, anonymous, or non-binary third person.[4] As of June 2022, neither have been encoded as a single code point in Unicode,[5] and neither are considered standard usage. Since at least 2014, Bilibili has used TA in its user pages.[6]
Additional notes
- The first-person pronouns 俺 ǎn and 偶 ǒu "I" are infrequently used in Mandarin conversation. They are of dialectal origin. However, their usage is gaining popularity among the young, most notably in online communications.
- According to Wang Li, the second person formal pronoun nín (您 "you, formal; polite") is derived from the fusion of the second person plural nǐmen (你们 "you, formal; polite"), making it somewhat analogous to the T-V distinction in Romance languages. Consistent with this hypothesized origin, *nínmen is traditionally considered to be a grammatically incorrect expression for the formal second person plural. Instead, the alternative phrases dàjiā (大家, "you, formal plural") and gèwèi (各位, "you, formal plural") are used, with the latter being somewhat more formal than the former. In addition, some dialects use an analogous formal third person pronoun tān (怹, "he/she, formal; polite").
- Traditional Chinese characters, as influenced by translations from Western languages and the Bible in the nineteenth century, occasionally distinguished gender in pronouns, although that distinction is abandoned in simplified Characters. Those traditional characters developed after Western contact include both masculine and feminine forms of "you" (你 and 妳). In the simplified system, 妳 is rare.
In other Sinitic languages
There are many other pronouns in modern Sinitic languages, such as Taiwanese Hokkien 恁 (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: lín) "you" and Written Cantonese 佢哋 (keúih deih) "they." There exist many more pronouns in Classical Chinese and in literary works, including 汝 (rǔ) or 爾 (ěr) for "you", and 吾 (wú) for "I" (see Chinese honorifics). They are not routinely encountered in colloquial speech.
| Historical | Modern | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shang and early Zhou period[7][8] | Classical Chinese[9][8] | Northern and Southern dynasties period and Tang dynasty[10] | Standard Chinese (Mandarin Chinese) | Shanghainese (Wu Chinese) | Hokkien (Min Chinese)[11] | Meixian Hakka (Hakka Chinese)[12][13] | Cantonese (Yue Chinese) | ||
| Singular | 1. | 余 *la, 予 *laʔ, 朕 *lrəmʔ | 我 *ŋˤajʔ, 吾 *ŋˤa (subjective and possessive only), 余 *la, 予 *laʔ | 我 ngaX, 吾 ngu | 我 wǒ | 吾 ŋu˩˧ | 我 góa, óa | 𠊎 ŋai11 | 我 ŋɔː˩˧ |
| 2. | 汝/女 *naʔ, 乃 *nˤəʔ | 爾 *neʔ, 汝/女 *naʔ, 而 *nə, 若 *nak | 爾 nejX, 汝/女 nyoX, 你 nejX | 你 nǐ | 儂 noŋ˩˧ | 汝 lí, lír, lú | 你 n11, ŋ11, ɲi11 | 你 nei˩˧ | |
| 3. | 厥 *kot (possessive), 之 *tə (objective), 其 *gə (possessive),
third person subject pronoun did not exist |
之 *tə (objective), 其 *gə (possessive), third person subject pronoun did not exist | 其 gi, 渠 gjo; 伊 ’jij, 之 tsyi, 他 tha | 他, 她, 它 tā | 伊 ɦi˩˧ | 伊 i | 佢 ɡi11, i11 | 佢 kʰɵy˩˧ | |
| Plural | 1. | 我 *ŋˤajʔ | same as singular | Singular + 等 tongX, 曹 dzaw, 輩 pwojH |
Both INCL. and EXCL. 我們 wǒmen INCL. 咱們 zánmen |
阿拉 ɐʔ˧ lɐʔ˦ | EXCL. 阮 goán, gún, ún INCL. 咱 lán | EXCL. 𠊎兜/𠊎等 ŋai11 deu24/ŋai11 nen24 INCL. 這兜/大家 en24 ia31 deu24/en24 tai55 ga24 |
我哋 ŋɔː˩˧ tei˨ |
| 2. | 爾 *neʔ | 你們 nǐmen | 㑚 na˩˧ | 恁 lín | 你兜/你等 ŋ11 deu24/ŋ11 nen24 | 你哋 nei˩˧ tei˨ | |||
| 3. | (not used) | 他們, 她們, 它們 tāmen | 伊拉 ɦi˩ lɐʔ˧ | 𪜶 in | 佢兜/佢等 ɡi11 deu24/i11 nen24 | 佢哋 kʰɵy˩˧ tei˨ | |||
To indicate alienable possession, 的 (de) is appended to the pronoun. For inalienable possession, such as family and entities very close to the owner, this may be omitted, e.g. 我妈/我媽 (wǒ mā) "my mother". For older generations, 令 (lìng) is the equivalent to the modern form 您的 (nínde), as in 令尊 (lìngzūn) "your father". In literary style, 其 (qí) is sometimes used for "his" or "her" or as a gender-neutral pronoun; e.g. 其父 means "his father" or "her father".
In Cantonese, for possessive, 嘅 (ge3) is appended to the pronoun. It is used in the same way as 的 in Mandarin.
In Taiwanese Hokkien, possessive pronouns are homophonous with plural pronouns. For example, 恁 (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: lín) can mean either "your" or "you (plural)".
The demonstrative pronouns work the same as in English.
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Proximal | 这个 / 這個 zhège this | 这些 / 這些 zhèxiē these |
| Distal | 那个 / 那個 nàge that | 那些 nàxiē those |
The distinction between singular and plural are made by the classifier 个/個 (gè) and 些 (xiē), and the following nouns remain the same. Usually inanimate objects are referred using these pronouns rather than the personal pronouns 它 (tā) and 它們 (tāmen). Traditional forms of these pronouns are: 這個 (zhège), 這些 (zhèxiē), 那個 (nàge), 那些 (nàxiē), and 它們 tāmen.
| Pronoun | Alternative HÉ-system | English |
|---|---|---|
| 谁 / 誰 shéi | 何人 hérén (what person) | who |
| 哪个 / 哪個 nǎge | 何个 / 何個 hége (what one) | which one |
| 什麼 / 什么 shénme | 何 何物 hé / héwù (what) | what |
| 哪裡 / 哪里 nǎlǐ 哪兒 / 哪儿 nǎr | 何处 / 何處 héchù 何地 hédì (what location) | where |
| 什麼時候 / 什么时候 shénme shíhou | 何时 / 何時 héshí (what time) | when |
| 为什么 / 為什麼 wèi shénme | 爲何 / 為何 wèihé (for what) | why |
| 怎么 / 怎麼 zěnme | 如何 rúhé (what to follow) | how |
| 多少 duōshǎo 几 / 幾 jǐ | 几何 / 幾何 jǐhé (what the amount) | how much |
| Pronoun | English |
|---|---|
| 大家 dàjiā | everyone |
| 谁都 shéidōu | |
| 谁也 shéiyě | anybody |
| 谁都不 shéidōubù | no one |
| 谁也不 shéiyěbù | nobody |
 |
- See also Chinese honorifics.
In imperial times, the pronoun for "I" was commonly omitted when speaking politely or to someone with higher social status. "I" was usually replaced with special pronouns to address specific situations. Examples include guǎrén (寡人) during early Chinese history and zhèn (朕) after the Qin dynasty when the Emperor is speaking to his subjects. When the subjects speak to the Emperor, they address themselves as chén (臣), or "your official". It was extremely impolite and taboo to address the Emperor as "you" or to refer to oneself as "I".
In modern times, the practice of self-deprecatory terms is still used in specific formal situations. In résumés, the term guì (贵/貴; lit. noble) is used for "you" and "your"; e.g., guì gōngsī (贵公司/貴公司) refers to "your company". Běnrén (本人; lit. this person) is used to refer to oneself.
Look up X也 in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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