Personal pronouns
In Mandarin
| Person | Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 我 wǒ I, me | 我们 / 我們* wǒmen we, us | 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.
This can be traced back to colonialism and Western-oriented linguistics in the early 1900s, where Eurocentric standardization of language and culture emerged to purify and create "effective governance.” [1] English was seen as progressive, while Chinese was characterized as a delayed language. [2] Before written Chinese, spoken Chinese did not differentiate between genders in regard to pronouns. Written Chinese was only relevant to the public under imperial decrees, and literacy was a privilege that ordinary citizens rarely had access to, due to Confucianist ideals. [3] There was an assumption that alphabetic literacy was superior in nature, and the assimilation of the Chinese language was initiated by Catholic missionaries from the West. [4] During the transition from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, the modern nation urgently moved to adopt European ideologies, [5] which translated to culture and linguistics.
“The focus on building a unified state was a driver in standardizing the Chinese language, which largely pushed Putonghua to be the dominant dialect. On the other hand, China’s minority languages suffered a huge blow—with diversity and culture being eradicated in the name of assimilation. [6] Language standardization, thus, became the norm as it was seen as a positive and rational step towards industrialization. [7]
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. [8] 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' (这/這 zhè) and 'that' (那 nà). [9]
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. [10]
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. [11] As of June 2022, neither have been encoded as a single code point in Unicode, [12] and neither are considered standard usage. Since at least 2014, Bilibili has used TA in its user pages. [13]
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 [14] [15] | Classical Chinese [16] [15] | Northern and Southern dynasties period and Tang dynasty [17] | Standard Chinese (Mandarin Chinese) | Shanghainese (Wu Chinese) | Hokkien (Min Chinese) [18] | Meixian Hakka (Hakka Chinese) [19] [20] | Cantonese (Yue Chinese) | ||
| Singular | 1. | 余*la, 予*laʔ, 朕*lrəmʔ | 我*ŋˤajʔ, 吾*ŋˤa (subjective and possessiveonly), 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ŋai11deu24/ŋai11nen24 INCL. 這兜/大家en24ia31deu24/en24tai55ga24 | 我哋ŋɔː˩˧tei˨ |
| 2. | 爾*neʔ | 你們nǐmen | 㑚na˩˧ | 恁lín | 你兜/你等ŋ11deu24/ŋ11nen24 | 你哋nei˩˧tei˨ | |||
| 3. | (not used) | 他們, 她們, 它們tāmen | 伊拉ɦi˩lɐʔ˧ | 𪜶in | 佢兜/佢等ɡi11deu24/i11nen24 | 佢哋kʰɵy˩˧tei˨ | |||
