The Simplicity Of Chinese Grammar - 1 (Pronouns)

Pronouns in Mandarin are really simple. Take a quick look.

Person	Singular	Plural
First	我 wǒ (I, me)	我们 wǒ-men (we, us (exclusive)) 咱们 zán-men (we, us (inclusive))
Second	你 nǐ (you (familiar)) 您 nín (you (honorific))	你们 nǐ-men (you)
Third	他 tā (he, him) 她 tā (she, her) 它 tā (it)	他们 tā-men (they, them (masculine)) 她们 tā-men (they, them (feminine)) 它们 tā-men (they, them (neuter))

Some takeaways:

1. The subjective and objective forms are the same, i.e., we don't have different words for "I" versus "me", "he" versus "him", "she" versus "her", or "they" versus "them". It's the same form of the word.

我爱你 wǒ ài nǐ ("I love you")

你爱我 nǐ ài wǒ ("You love I", not "You love me")

我给你 wǒ gěi nǐ ("I give you")

给我 gěi wǒ ("Give me")

我去叫他 wǒ qù jiào tā ("I go call him", or "I'll call him")

叫我 以实玛利 jiào wǒ yǐ shí mǎ lì ("Call me Ishmael")

2. All plurals are formed in the same way, i.e., by adding the no-tone particle 们 men.

3. If we look closely, we can see that the character for the second-person (honorific) 您 nín is formed by combining the characters for the second-person (familiar) 你 nǐ with the character for "heart" 心 xīn. It's like placing your hand on your heart to show respect when addressing someone.

您 nín (You (honorific)) = 你 nǐ (you (familiar)) + 心 xīn (heart)

4. I couldn't help but be struck by the similarity between the Tamil and Mandarin words for "you" - both the familiar and the honorific forms.

5. It's interesting that the third person pronouns are written differently depending on gender, but are all pronounced in exactly the same way.

This is one area where English actually has an advantage in having a gender-neutral pronoun for the third-person plural ("they").

French, for example, trips up badly here. The third-person pronouns in French are il (he), elle (she), ils (they - masculine) and elles (they - feminine).

What if a group of people consists of both men and women? This is where the French language betrays a sexist bias. If a group consists exclusively of women, it can be referred to as "elles", but if a group of women happens to contain even one man, it has to be called "ils".

The Chinese approach partially sidesteps the problem. It's not clear how one would write the word for "they" if a group consists of both men and women, but since the pronunciation of all forms of "they" is the same (tā-men), one can pretend ignorance about this difference when speaking.

6. I couldn't help but be amused by the fact that the Mandarin word for "I" or "me" and the Hindi word for "he", "she" and "it" sound very similar.

The Hindi word वह woh can be used to mean "he", "she" or "it", in almost exactly the way that the Mandarin word tā (whether spelt 他, 她 or 它) is used. Of course, the Hindi वह woh (third person singular) means something very different from the Mandarin 我 wǒ (first person singular).