Chinese Pronouns 汉语代词

Chinese Pronouns 汉语代词

Chinese pronouns (Chinese: 代词/代詞; pinyin: dàicí or Chinese: 代名詞; pinyin: dàimíngcí) differ somewhat from pronouns in English and other 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 的 de. It also seems that pronouns in Chinese are often substituted by honorific alternatives.

Personal pronouns:

我

wǒ

I, me

我們

wǒmen

we, us

咱們

zánmen

we, us

你

nǐ

you

您

nín

you

他 / 她 / 它

tā

he/him/she/her, she/her, it

他們 / 她們 / 它們

tāmen

they/them