Chinese Pronouns

Today, I suppose, will be our first real lesson. That said, I do hope you're not relying on me to teach you Chinese. There are plenty of excellent resources out there. Try them. Indeed, you'll have to because  I won't teach you pinyin pronunciation. I've never been  comfortable with the whole bo po mo fo thing. 

In my mind it sounds to much like: bhrehter, phter, mehter, [insert whatever is Proto-Indo-European for fucker]. 

So I suggest you let the fine folks at Popup Chinese or Sinoslice teach you your pinyin and tones. Or better yet how about you drop everything and move to China. You'll be amazed at how intelligent you can be when forced to be.

No, my aim is to provide you a means of reviewing. So let's review our pronouns. 

Our common singular pronouns are:

我 wo I

你 ni You

他 / 她 / 它 ta He / She / It

We form the plural by adding the suffix 们 men. Hence, our common plural pronouns are:

我们 women We

你们 nimen You

他们 / 她们 / 它们 tamen They

I trust you are with me so far. Thankfully, the pronouns listed above may serve as either subject or object. Put another way, 我 means either I or me. The meaning depends on the context. Confusing?

Personally, I'm confused about lot of the Chinese I hear but working out the subject and the object of a sentence isn't problem. 

Now, before we get to our less common pronouns, let's examine all those ta and tamen. If you've studied French, you're might be wondering if the rules for using 他们 and 她们 are the same as the rules for using ils and elles. 

In other words, if the group of people is both male and female, do I use the masculine form [他们] or the feminine form [她们]. If there is at least one male in the group, you should use the masculine form. This is what is taught to native speakers. Although it does give female native speakers pause for thought. 

Now, let's talk about 它. Its usage is not similar to English usage. In the first place, it isn't common. In Chinese, your sentence doesn't need to include an explicit subject. The subject is often understood. Consequently, when you as some a question like, 'Is Xidan subway station nearby.' They won't use  

它 in their reply.

They'll often answer in a few words and point you in the right direction. If the directions are complex, then they'll probably just say, 'Xidan subway station' or 'that subway station'. They might also say, 'it'. My point is that using 它 isn't required, isn't expected, and might even cause confusion. 

In fact, I've only ever used 它 in reference to animals. And even then the tendency is to use a word like 'that' or 'this' or a phrase like 'that cute x'.

Now, suppose you're discussing a fetus of unknown gender. In English we at least tend to write, 'Is it a boy or a girl?' In Chinese the equivalent question is something like, '他是男孩子还是女孩子？'Notice that we use 他. That is because 他 has an inclusive sense. If we want to be more gender neutral, we could write, '他(她)是男孩子还是女孩子？' Of course, it would be ridiculous to try and say something of the sort as the various forms of ta share a common pronunciation.

Now, I for one, am not particularly bothered by using 他 in an inclusive sense. The other two ta are of more recent coinage. 他 itself is composed of two elements: 人 and 也. The first, 人, includes all humans and is gender neutral. The second,也, just means 'also'. 

The masculine form,  他, is used in reference to China.

That's probably more than enough of the third person singular for one day.

There is, however, one more topic deserving mention. The pronouns above are not used as possessive pronouns. So we'll save those for another time. You can also expect posts on three other common pronouns, Imperial pronouns, and the pronouns you'll encounter in Chinese poetry. 

And, so, in the words of that old 鬼佬 (to throw some Cantonese at you) on CCTV再见.