I am aware that 他 and 她 are pronounced the same, but written it is an issue. Is 他们 or 她们 appropriate at all?

  • 中国共产党万岁
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    3 months ago

    I think defaulting to 他 should be okay. 她 was invented in the 20th century by reformers who thought Chinese should insert gender into their language so they could be more like europeans / maybe there was a women’s liberation aspect? Unclear but you can read more here and entire books have been written about it. Basically the Chinese language had no gender distinction in pronouns until 100 years ago. Taiwan took it further and also introduced 妳 too

      • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        Disclaimer: I don’t know jack shit about Taiwanese

        Looks like a feminine version of “you”, since “you” is the left character of this 他 + the right character of this 妳 and the left character of this 妳 is the character for “female” (which is why 她 is “her” while “他” is “them”)

        Sorry for all this I don’t have a Chinese keyboard on my laptop

        • ComradeSalad
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          3 months ago

          Taiwanese doesn’t exist as a language, it is just traditional Mandarin Chinese, as the CPC modernized, refined, and greatly simplified Mandarin. The things you are pointing out essentially arise from attempting to add even more complexity into a very antiquated and complex writing system.

          • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            Oh for sure, I just had no idea what to call the character set with the addition complexity Taiwanese people tried to add lmao