Chinese pronouns

Chinese pronouns ( or ) differ somewhat from pronouns in English and 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 ''de''. Pronouns in Chinese are often substituted by honorific alternatives.

Personal pronouns

In Mandarin

:

:* The character to indicate plurality is (men) in Traditional Chinese characters, and is in simplified.
:** can be either inclusive or exclusive, depending on the circumstance where it is used.
:^†Used to indicate 'you and I' (two people) only, and can only be used as a subject (not an object); in all other cases ''wǒmen'' is used. This form has fallen into disuse outside Beijing, and may be a Manchu influence.

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 without distinction between genders, those that wished to preserve the spoken non-gendered pronoun but introduce a new female pronoun in writing, and those that wished to introduce a differently pronounced female pronoun . The pronoun enjoyed widespread support in the 1920s and 1930s but lost out to after the Chinese Civil War. Currently, written pronouns are divided between the masculine human (he, him), feminine human (she, her), and non-human (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'.

Other, rarer new written pronouns in the second person are ''nǐ'' ( "you, a deity"), ''nǐ'' ( "you, a male"), and ''nǐ'' ( "you, a female"). In the third person, they are ''tā'' ( "it, an animal"), ''tā'' ( "it, a deity"), and ''tā'' ( "it, an inanimate object"). Among users of traditional Chinese characters, these distinctions are only made in Taiwanese Mandarin; in simplified Chinese, ''tā'' () is the only third-person non-human form and ''nǐ'' () is the only second person form. The third person distinction between "he" () and "she" () remain in use in all forms of written standard Mandarin.

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. As of June 2022, neither have been encoded as a single code point in Unicode, and neither are considered standard usage.

Additional notes

* The first-person pronouns ''ǎn'' and ''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'' ( "you, formal; polite") is derived from the fusion of the second person plural ''nǐmen'' ( "you, formal; polite"), making it somewhat analogous to the distinction between T/V pronouns in Romance languages or thou/you in Early Modern English. 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" ( and ), rarely used today even in writings in traditional characters; in the simplified system, is rare.

In other Sinitic languages

There are many other pronouns in modern Sinitic languages, such as Taiwanese Minnan () "you" and Written Cantonese (keúih deih) "they." There exist many more pronouns in Classical Chinese and in literary works, including (rǔ) or (ěr) for "you", and (wú) for "I" (see Chinese honorifics). They are not routinely encountered in colloquial speech.

Possessives

To indicate alienable possession, (''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. (''wǒ mā'') "my mother". For older generations, (''lìng'') is the equivalent to the modern form (''nínde''), as in (''lìngzūn'') "your father". In literary style, (''qí'') is sometimes used for "his" or "her" or as a gender-neutral pronoun; e.g. means "his father" or "her father".

In Cantonese, for possessive, (''ge3'') is appended to the pronoun. It is used in the same way as in Mandarin.

In Taiwanese Minnan the character for "your" is (); although this would be pronounced the same as the personal pronoun ''lín'', it is represented by a different character when used as the equivalent of in Standard Chinese.

Demonstrative pronouns

The demonstrative pronouns work the same as in English.

The distinction between singular and plural are made by the classifier (gè) and (xiē), and the following nouns remain the same. Usually inanimate objects are referred using these pronouns rather than the personal pronouns (tā) and (tāmen). Traditional forms of these pronouns are: (zhège), (zhèxiē), (nàge), (nàxiē), and tāmen.

Interrogative pronouns

Indefinite pronouns

Pronouns in imperial times

:''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'' () during early Chinese history and ''zhèn'' () after the Qin dynasty when the Emperor is speaking to his subjects. When the subjects speak to the Emperor, they address themselves as ''chén'' (), 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'' (; lit. ''noble'') is used for "you" and "your"; e.g., ''gùi gōngsī'' () refers to "your company". Běnrén (; lit. ''this person'') is used to refer to oneself.

See also

*Chinese honorifics
*Chinese grammar
* Chinese language
* Cantonese pronouns

References

Bibliography

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