Then you’d use the formal 您.
謝謝 您
妳 is an artificial construct, having appeared only recently in history. And in my opinion it is one of the few characters I think should be abolished (along with 臺 and a few others), as it is absolutely useless.
你 is generic; it is only masculine when used in explicit contrast with 妳. If you use 你 when writing to a woman, nobody would bat an eye.
At least I 想 this is so.
妳 is an artificial construct, having appeared only recently in history. And in my opinion it is one of the few characters I think should be abolished (along with 臺 and a few others), as it is absolutely useless.
你 is generic; it is only masculine when used in explicit contrast with 妳. If you use 你 when writing to a woman, nobody would bat an eye.
At least I 想 this is so.[/quote]
All the “stuff” I’ve seen so far shows 你 meaning good 'ol “you” so I was a bit surprised to hear that there even is such a thing as a feminine and masculine “you”.
((note - You guys might remember me as the rabid character hater who was trying to learn without “any” recourse to the character system. Well, that experiment is over. These days I can’t help but find the things fascinating despite myself and I actually jones for them if I can’t study (loose interpretation of the term “study”) them for some reason. Funny how things turn out.))
btw, I love this system of replacing words with
詞
from the other language. I remember hearing about a book that started out in English and ended in French that way. There’d be grammar glitches that only a genius could straighten out if you wanted to really do it, but as an occassional deal where the meaning of the character is obvious because we have been discussing it or because the context makes it obvious, and it doesn’t affect the grammar because you are just sticking in one word, yeah, I think it is perfectly, well, perfect.
You想得right. But how did 臺 come about to be?
bob – there’s 你/妳, and then there’s 他/她. There’s also 我 and 娥, but the latter isn’t the feminine form of ‘I’. But hey, you can start a new trend. BTW, welcome to the world of random squiggles.
You想得right. But how did 臺 come about to be?
bob – there’s 你/妳, and then there’s 他/她. There’s also 我 and 娥, but the latter isn’t the feminine form of ‘I’. But hey, you can start a new trend. BTW, welcome to the world of random squiggles.[/quote]
you he, you she, he, she, I, and “uh?”
How’d I do?
Ni men xiang tai duo!
Etymologically, they’re very distinct characters, just FYI.
I can’t find much information on it other than what’s in HYDZD p.1175b, q.v. – you can probably read it better than I can.
I have never seen any evidence that 臺 predates the late Warring States to mid Han, whereas 台 (p.242a) appears to be earlier, and their meanings differ completely, until eventual phonetic loan for simplification.
According to Axel Schuessler, 臺 is a low-level female servant. He does not explain second-tone 台, but first-tone 台 means “rounded”, describing a person’s back in old age.
Don’t you mean 嬯 as a female instance of 臺?
Don’t you mean 嬯 as a female instance of 臺?[/quote]
Could be: Schuessler’s wording in this entry is a little ambiguous.
[color=#0000BF]想想看[/color]