Talk:Chinese pronouns

Comment

The Chinese grammar page lists traditional versions before simplified versions, in opposite practice to this page; I suggest the two pages be made consistent one way or the other.

Yes, the other page should reverse the order. Chameleon 18:14, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Comment

I see "牠" is used to indicate god for respect in Hong Kong. Is that correct? --Yacht 07:58, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

No, to indicate the Christian God, i believe 祂 is used. Colipon 20:55, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Comment

您们 is used quite often in the Beijing regionalect, so I've omitted the sentence which states that it is not. --Taoster 23:51, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Table

I'm not yet advanced enough to even think about attempting this, but the table could be better organised. ~~See this page for an example of what I think is an ideally organised pronoun table.~~ Recognizance (talk) 22:54, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some extremely helpful users have made sample versions on my talk page. I intend to incorporate their ideas later today. Recognizance (talk) 19:21, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

妳 ?

Can a source be given for this character? Personally, I have never seen it before, and it's not even possible to type using my Pinyin input scheme. The article claims that "the distinction between 你 and 妳 is not always maintained", but it seems more likely to me that that distinction has totally been lost, even in writing, and that 妳 is a "dead" character. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:40, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I've gone ahead and removed it. I read further along and saw that it's a traditional character (which explains why I'm not familiar with it, I mostly just read simplified) and that even there it's not used frequently. I think the table should just be summarizing the major pronouns, not all of them, so this one should probably be left out, as are the many other minor variants. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:13, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine. If I'd been more familiar with Wikipedia I'd probably have added a footnote and/or ref when I included it. Your point makes sense, particularly if it's going to confuse users of the language. Recognizance (talk) 07:42, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I feel stupid for the above. Now that I think of it I've seen 妳 quite often in subtitles for Taiwanese and HK films. I don't have a strong opinion, though, on whether it should be included in the table or the prose. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

偶

It is said in this article that:

The pronouns 俺 ǎn and 偶 ǒu are often used in Mandarin to mean "I". They are of dialectal origins, once spoken by the stereotypical country-side commoner. However, their usage is gaining popularity among the young, most notably in online communications.

This however is not accurate. While it is true that 俺 is indeed of some vernacular origines (mainly in rural Northen China), 偶 is not. It had never, in whatever context and dialect, had a meaning of "I" or been used as a pronoun, until quite recently when the Internet became popular in the country where young people came to find it interesting to make some character as an alternative to the formal yet mundane first person pronoun which is 我, thus borrowing 俺, a word customarily believed to be bucolic and dismissed in urban area, into the visual world. Personally, I believe 偶 is an accidental extension of 俺, partly because the two share some similarity in both pronunciation and form, and partly due to the possibility that 偶 sounds cuter or more genial. However, unlike 俺, 偶 did not involve pronoun usage, either historically or geographically; it is nothing more than a catch-phrase which exclusively belongs to the Internet.

Hope someone can fix it. This may need some citation although I would like to vouch for its validity given that my mother tongue is Chinese.--Nrgbooster (talk) 10:35, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe there should be a list of pronouns that appear in various dialects. I find that the pronunciation varies considerably, enough for different characters. Furthermore, some dialects have different connotations associated with various pronouns, such as you mentioned above. It would also be a good survey of phonological differences between different dialects.Van Gulik (talk) 01:39, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

人家

人家 also has some pronominal usages; it might be appropriate to cover this briefly somewhere in the article. As a non-native speaker, though, I don't have a great sense for the pragmatics of how it's used (I can understand who it's referring to when someone else uses it, but I generally avoid using it myself), so I wouldn't feel comfortable adding it on my own right now. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:48, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is analyzed from an Indo-European point of view

I'll have to do a rewrite in a while, as I have studied Chinese linguistics before. It's best not to say that 自己 is a marker of a reflexive pronoun, for example. Chinese grammar is its own system, and it doesn't have only features that map exactly to the grammars of Indo-European languages. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 18:41, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll keep looking for sources. Some sources I have at hand in my home office (reference grammars of Modern Standard Chinese) are not cited here yet. An article about Chinese language grammar should approach Chinese on its own terms, not by analogy with noncognate Indo-European languages. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:36, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposed merge of Cantonese pronouns into Chinese pronouns

Withdrawn. Remsense诉 08:06, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Would result in a more informative, well-rounded single article. Remsense诉 10:48, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. They are different. There can be an article on the language family too. 59.152.195.28 (talk) 08:06, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.