Chinese pronouns 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", 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 and possessive pronoun ; both are formed by appending the particle 的 de. Pronouns in Chinese are often substituted by honorific alternatives.
Personal pronouns
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. In the second person, they are nǐ, nǐ, and nǐ. In the third person, they are tā, tā, and tā. 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. According to Wang Li, the second person formal pronoun nín is derived from the fusion of the second person pluralnǐmen, 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 and gèwèi are used, with the latter being somewhat more formal than the former. In addition, some dialects use an analogous formal third person pronountān. The first-person pronouns 俺 ǎn and 偶 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. 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", rarely used today even in writings in traditional characters; in the simplified system, 妳 is rare. There are many other pronouns in modern Sinitic languages, such as Taiwanese Minnan 恁 "you" and Written Cantonese 佢哋 "they." There exist many more pronouns in Classical Chinese and in literary works, including 汝 or 爾 for "you", and 吾 for "I". They are not routinely encountered in colloquial speech.
Historical development of personal pronouns
Possessives
To indicate alienable possession, 的 is appended to the pronoun. For inalienable possession, such as family and entities very close to the owner, this may be omitted, e.g. 我妈/我媽 "my mother". For older generations, 令 is the equivalent to the modern form 您的, as in 令尊 "your father". In literary style, 其 is sometimes used for "his" or "her"; e.g. 其父 means "his father" or "her father". In Cantonese, for possessive, 嘅 is appended to the pronoun. It is used in the same way as 的 in Mandarin. In Taiwanese Minnan the character for "your" is 恁 ; although this would be pronounced the same as the personal pronoun 汝 lín, it is represented by a different character when used as the equivalent of 你的 in Standard Chinese.
The distinction between singular and plural are made by the classifier 个/個 and 些, and the following nouns remain the same. Usually inanimate objects are referred using these pronouns rather than the personal pronouns 它 and 它們. Traditional forms of these pronouns are: 這個, 這些, 那個, 那些, and 它們 tāmen.
Interrogative pronouns
Pronoun
Alternative HE-system
English
誰 shéi
何人 hérén
who
哪個 nǎge
何個 hége
which one
甚麼 shénme
何 / 何物 hé / héwù
what
哪裏 or 哪兒 nǎlǐ or nǎr
何處 / 何地 héchù / hédì
where
甚麼時候 shénme shíhou
何時 héshí
when
爲甚麼 wèi shénme
爲何 wèihé
why
怎麼 zěnme
如何 rúhé
how
多少 or 幾 duōshǎo or jǐ
幾何 jǐhé
how much
Indefinite pronouns
Pronouns in imperial times
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 address oneself as "I". In modern times, the practice of self-deprecatory terms is still used in specific formal situations. In résumés, the term guì is used for "you" and "your"; e.g., gùi gōngsī refers to "your company". Běnrén is used to refer to oneself.
