this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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Instead of having different words for plural of pronouns, in Chinese we append a character after single pronouns to make them plural.
You get the idea. We also have pronouns for animals (牠), inanimate objects (它) and God (祂), and you can similarly add 們 to make them plural (except for god, I haven't seen the character being used in plural). Using they/them as pronoun for a person doesn't make sense in Chinese.
Chinese used to have no gender pronouns. Everyone is referred to as 他 (Mandarin) or 佢 (Cantonese). It's in last century when 她 ("she") is "invented", and no new gender pronouns in Cantonese. However, in terms of speaking, they are all pronounced the same way (ta1 in Mandarin, keoi5 in Cantonese), so it's literally impossible to use the wrong pronoun if you're speaking or typing in Cantonese.