After a discussion at work today, I’ve got a question for all you experts in Chinese characters here:
你 has it’s female equaivalent, 妳
他 has 她
but do either of these have specifically male versions? As far as I know, 你 and 他 are technically gender neutral, although in practice 他 does seem to be more commonly male-specific. But are there any actual, proper, definitively masculine versions of these? Even if they’re different characters entirely…
Sup Tetsuo,
你 and 他 are masculine. Definitively. Even if you are talking about/to a group of ten women and one man, you would refer to them as 你們 or 他們.
(There are also “it” 它 and “you formal to elders” 您 but you know that.)
also 牠 for animals and 祂 for gods.
i agree with 914. a male would always be referred to with 他, there is no other more specific version.
What got me wondering is this:
Over the course of my work, I have frequently come across people - professional writers through to idiot students - who will refer throughout texts to 他 but then suddenly say xxx小姐 for the same person. Which leads me to believe that either 他 has become gender neutral through usage, or has always been so. And I’ve only ever seen 妳 where it’s making a point to outright make clear that a woman is the one being referred to. Then there’s the whopping range of 他她它牠祂, which covers pretty much every base except explicitly male. Is it just that men were so dominant in educated society historically that either the gender neutral was automatically assumed to be male by virtue of simple probability, or that there are no explicitly masculine forms now because, again, thanks to the dominance of men in educated society, the masculine term, which too would have predominated, became gender neutral as women started to gain on the men and use the dominant form of the character?
他 is masculine AND also neutral. In writing today, when writing about a woman, one should use 她. But people have been so accustomed to using 他 when referring to male or female, that’s why it’s still common. I suspect 她 was “invented” later than 他. As Taiwan becomes more pc/equal you will see less 他 referring to females and see the proper 她.
So if you see 他 referring to Ms Lee, it is wrong. It must be 她.
this is my understanding, there may be large gaping holes in it. none of these written words referred to the third person in classical chinese, they came into use with the rise of colloquial written chinese around the end of the last century. since its creation 他 has always been gender neutral. as initially created it reflected the nature of spoken chinese. i think only 它 even existed in written chinese previously. besides those 2, the other forms are more recent and specifying creations. i’m not sure about this, hopefully someone can clear it up.
Actually, neither explanation. ‘Ta’ in spoken Chinese is neutral, male, female, whatever, because Chinese doesn’t have gender. Not all languages do; it’s certainly not necessary. Even the very limited gender system of English, which follows ‘natural’ gender for the most part, is not necessary. When the Chinese wanted to write ‘ta’, they chose what you refer to as the masculine form. Really it is afterwards, ie., lately, that they decided they needed separate forms for females, gods, etc. I believe they felt this need because of exposure to Europeean languages, where male and female pronouns (at the least) are different.
The spoken form of ‘he’ and ‘she’ (and ‘him’ and ‘her’, for that matter) are the same in Chinese; the specifically female written version is a later addition, because of the influence of European grammar.
I thought about this recently when I received an email from someone telling me about a new friend he met. The new friend was only referred to as 他, so I wondered if it is possible that he was talking about a female friend. It’s pretty safe to assume that 他 is a male, but if not, would that make the email dishonest or evasive, or would it still be perfectly natural?
In practical usage (and without commentary on PC), 他 can refer to the male, female, or generic third person, but 她 can only refer to the female third person.
So in answer to your question, if the new friend is female, then it
基本上就用 他 她 它 这三个 其他的都 不知道是哪里来的！
用法很简单 他 he/him 他们 they/them 她 she/her 她们 they/them
它 it 它们 they/them .
在正式的场合里 只要某一组人里 有一个男性 都只能用他们 否则将会视为不礼貌 ，而其他女性则只好认了，男权注意国家就是这样的。
而它就是指 动物或是无生命体的。 
Did you read the thread cloud? You’ve just said exactly what we already knew. The usage wasn’t even in question either. Next time read the thread before replying please.
i just summarized them for you all , so i also wonder if you really know how to use them why you discuss them here?希奇！~
Because we’re talking about the ORIGINS of them, not the USE.
Sociolinguistically speaking, it’s very common for one variant to cover both masculine and mixed groups, while there is a specific variant which can ONLY be feminine. I’d say look at historical/social reasons – women as chattel (frequently not listed or just lumped together with children and slaves on census data, etc.) The society influences the usage of the language, and change takes a really long time. Although I would guess that today, change might be somewhat faster because of the faster and broader communications worldwide.