I'm learning Russian and I don't know what it is for that, but in German I've seen "xier", "sier", and "dey". I might use "dey/dem".

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[–] 5 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Instead of having different words for plural of pronouns, in Chinese we append a character after single pronouns to make them plural.

  • 我 (me) -> 我們 (us)
  • 你 (you) -> 你們 (you all)
  • 他 (him) -> 他們 (them (male))
  • 她 (her) -> 她們 (them (female))

You get the idea. We also have pronouns for animals (牠), inanimate objects (它) and God (祂), and you can similarly add 們 to make them plural (except for god, I haven't seen the character being used in plural). Using they/them as pronoun for a person doesn't make sense in Chinese.

Chinese used to have no gender pronouns. Everyone is referred to as 他 (Mandarin) or 佢 (Cantonese). It's in last century when 她 ("she") is "invented", and no new gender pronouns in Cantonese. However, in terms of speaking, they are all pronounced the same way (ta1 in Mandarin, keoi5 in Cantonese), so it's literally impossible to use the wrong pronoun if you're speaking or typing in Cantonese.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (4 children)

    Disclaimer: I'm learning Japanese & I don't know Chinese.

    It looks like the original character for the 3rf person pronoun is now the masculine pronoun & the female pronoun is made by substituting the person component (人, I don't know how to type the left-component form) with the woman component (女).

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    That's exactly how to understand them

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