Lesson 4: Pronouns

你好!  Pronouns, if you aren't already aware, are words like "I, you, he, she, etc."  Kind of important.  So let's get right to it!

我

我 - (wo3) I / me

你 - (ni3) you (singular)

他 - (ta1) he

她 - (ta1) she

它 - (ta1) it (typically animals)

我们

我们 - (wo3 men2) we

你们 - (ni3 men2) you (plural)

他们 - (ta1 men2) they (at least one male in group)

她们 - (ta1 men2) they (all female)

它们 - (ta1 men2) they

You probably noticed that he, she and it have the same pronunciation, just like the plurals of these forms: they.  So how on earth are you expected to discern between each in spoken language?  The answer is found in context.  In English, you don't just start a random conversation talking about "He ate a whole bag of chips the other day."  You'd be wondering who is this "he?"  Instead, you would start with something like "My brother ate a whole bag of chips and he went to the gym the next day."  Chinese is similar in this sense.

If you spend time around Chinese people speaking English, you may have heard them accidentally referring to a girl as a "he!"  This mistake most likely comes from this part of their language.  It all adds up now, doesn't it?

If in spoken language the 他(ta1)，她(ta1)，and 它(ta1) are the same, then what about in written language?  In that case you need to make sure that you address the gender properly.  A good rule of thumb is that masculine takes it all: if there is one man amongst a hundred girls and you want to refer to them all (as "they"), then you will use 他们(ta1 men2) instead of 她们(ta1 men2).

You also may have noticed that to all the plural pronouns, we added 们 (men2) to the end of the singular pronoun to make it plural.  Doesn't that make Chinese a lot easier?  Yipee!

Practice: Try to make sense of these sentences:

她 is my girlfriend.

我们 want to eat out as a family.

你 just ran a marathon!

你好吗？(look back to Lesson 1 if you need a hint)

谢谢你 (look back to Lesson 1 if you need a hint)