Nonbinary third person pronoun in written Mandarin
Scarlet & Black 2021-07-17
Post on Instagram:
If you click on the arrowhead at the middle right of the above panel, you will find a visual depiction of what is said in words beneath the panel.
The gist of the matter is that wú 无 / 無 ("no; not; there is no[ne]"} has replaced the male and female semantics of tā 他 and tā 她. As we have written in previous posts (there are also third "person" pronouns for animals and spirits (牠 祂; see "Selected readings" below), but they all have the identical pronunciation tā .
There exists another character of separate derivation, 它, also pronounced tā, for which the following usage notes apply:
- In traditional Chinese, there is generally a distinction between 它 and 牠; the former refers exclusively to inanimate objects, while the latter refers exclusively to animals.
- In simplified Chinese, only 它 is used for both inanimate objects and animals
(source)
Since all of the third "person" pronouns discussed above are pronounced tā in spoken language, is it possible / desirable that the new graph featured in the above panel replace all of them in written language?
Selected readings
- "The degendering of the third person pronoun in Mandarin, pt. 2" (10/16/17)
- "The degendering of the third person pronoun in Mandarin " (12/12/13)
- "Roman-letter Mandarin pronoun of indeterminate gender " (9/9/16)
- "Sweden's gender-neutral 3rd-person singular pronoun " (4/13/17)
- "Gender bending " (10/6/15)
- "Archive for singular 'they'"
- "Gender-inclusive French" (7/7/21)
[h.t. Jeff DeMarco]