Speaking Personal Pronouns in Mandarin Chinese
Learn Mandarin Online – How to Say The Personal Pronouns in Mandarin Chinese
The personal pronouns in Mandarin Chinese are surprising simple, much easier than in Western languages such as English, French or Spanish. In Chinese there is no difference between I and me, she and her, we and us, or they and them.
We’ve already learned I (wǒ, 我) and you (nǐ, 你). To say he or she say tā with the first flat tone. While the sound of the word is the same for both he and she (this may be the reason why Chinese people often stumble on he and she when speaking English), the characters are different. The character for she is 她, and has a woman radical (女) on the left, while the character for he (他) has a person radical (人) on the left.
To say “we or us” simply stick the word “men” on the end of wǒ (我) and say wǒmen (我们). “Men” uses the neutral tone so there is no inflection in the voice. The character men (们) literally means many people. To say “you plural” (vous in French, ustedes in Spanish or ya’ll down south) say nǐmen (你们). For “they or them” say tāmen (他们).
July 9th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Awesome!
January 25th, 2010 at 3:38 am
[...] first words you'll learn in the lesson are w? (?) and n? (?). Check out my previous lesson personal pronouns to review this [...]
February 17th, 2010 at 7:38 am
[...] first words you’ll learn in the lesson are wǒ (我) and nǐ (你). Check out my previous lesson personal pronouns to review this [...]