this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Apologies for the overly specific question, but what is the proper way to refer to enby people in mandarin? (hexbear.net)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by blakeus12@hexbear.net to c/learnchinese@lemmygrad.ml
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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?

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[–] azanra4@lemmygrad.ml 25 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] blakeus12@hexbear.net 7 points 7 months ago

thanks, this was really informative. I'll keep this in mind and read about it

[–] Flyberius@hexbear.net 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

What's that last one that Taiwan introduced?

[–] StJobertus@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

A female version of 你, meaning “you”.

[–] GaveUp@hexbear.net 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

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@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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@hexbear.net 2 points 7 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

[–] Maoo@hexbear.net 10 points 7 months ago

I would also like to know this!

[–] JoeDaRedTrooperYT@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 7 months ago

I am not sure if this is right but here's one attempt at Hanzi I made

[–] thefreepenguinalt@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I saw someone using 佢 for the neutral 3rd-person pronoun. It comes from Canto, where it is used regardless of gender.

In a colloquial situation, Chinese netizens often just write "ta"

[–] blakeus12@hexbear.net 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

write out the letters t and a?

also for 佢，would they still use ta for speaking? or use qu as the spoken word as well?

[–] thefreepenguinalt@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

  1. ye

  2. IDK, prolly the former

[–] blakeus12@hexbear.net 1 points 7 months ago

thank you!

[–] Kaplya@hexbear.net 4 points 7 months ago

TA and TA们

[–] ZhongwenXuesheng@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 months ago

No idea how legitimate this is, but I stumbled on this recently: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jpasden/51282243353/