Pronouns.

I love knowing multiple languages. It gives me a point of reference within which to frame my own culture (mostly American, sometimes Chinese) or subcultures, and it removes the idea of English being the default. I'm not sure that the benefits of knowing two languages other than English are worth what it took for me to learn them and, in the case of Chinese, absorb the culture enough to be truly fluent, but since it's done, I might as well reap the rewards in the form of getting to make further observations/criticisms on society. Right?

Pronouns are generally a big deal in our society. "He", "she", and "it" are quite distinct, and are usually seen as non-overlapping but all-inclusive categories. And English works just fine with just one first person plural pronoun, and one second person singular pronoun.

But let me tell you, things could be very different. As a fun thought exercise, I sometimes wonder what would happen if we all suddenly started using the modern Mandarin set of pronouns, wherein no verbal distinction is made between "he", "she", and "it", and only through Western influence has "he" become the written default. Or where there are three first person plural pronouns, and a set of discrete polite pronouns as well as a distinct set of self-deprecating ones, and pronoun sets are not always mutually exclusive.

And would using different pronouns make us value different information about people, or would we adapt the pronouns to fit our current usages? As a society, are we too entrenched in the current system to adapt to a change in language, or would we be able to adapt?

Now, for some linguistic geekiness, here's a fairly complete list of pronouns used in modern Mandarin, as well as a short list of those noble and interesting pronouns that didn't make it through the transition from traditional Chinese to simplified Chinese. You can skip ahead if you want to, I promise I don't mind. Go ahead, the linguistic anthropology geek in me doesn't hate you for it. *sniff sniffle* 

Format
Person: Chinese simplified character, PinYin, English equivalent


First Person Pronouns
Singular: 我, wo3, I/me
Informal singular: 俺/偶, an3/ou3, some slang version of me that doesn't exist in English
Deprecatory:  本人, ben3ren2, literally "this person"
Exclusive plural: 我们, wo3men, we/us not including the listener
Inclusive plural 1: 咱们, zan3men, you (listener) and I (speaker)
Inclusive plural 2: 俺们, an3men, all of us/you (listener) plus me (speaker) plus at least one other person

Second Person Pronouns
Informal singular: 你, ni3, you referring to one person
Formal singular: 您, nin3, you referring to one person
Informal plural: 你们, nimen3, you referring to two or more people
Formal plural: 您们, ninmen3, you referring to two or more people
Deprecatory: 贵, gui4, used for both singular and plural as well as possessive, literally "noble"

Third Person Pronouns
Feminine singular: 她, ta1, she
Masculine singular: 他, ta1, he
Neuter singular: 它, ta1, it
Feminine plural: 她们, ta1men, more than one she
Masculine plural: 他们, ta1men, more than one he
Neuter plural: 它们, ta1men, more than one it

Pronouns No Longer Used in Modern Mandarin (Many of which don't have English counterparts or categories)
Second person feminine singular: 妳, ni3, feminine you
Second person feminine plural: 妳們, ni3men, more than one feminine you
Third person animal singular: 牠, ta1, one animal
Third person animal plural: 牠們, ta1men, more than one animal
Third person deistic singular: 祂, ta1, one deity
Third person deistic plural: 祂們, ta1men, more than one deity

Now, for some observations.

All of the third person pronouns are pronounced the same way. No, this isn't confusing. It just means that Chinese people aren't as obsessed as we are with knowing definitively everyone's sex. And if you're talking about an object or animal, context should make that pretty clear. I find it interesting though that they do make a distinction in written language, and had their third person pronouns split into even smaller categories than ours, with animals and deities each having their own pronoun. What does it say about us that plants and animals are counted as "things"? And how does this affect the way we treat and think about plants and animals?

The fact that there are three Chinese first person plural pronouns emphasises the need, in that society, for clarity concerning exactly who is being spoken to, about, or represented. And honestly, after using those pronouns, coming back to English with its clumsy bits of "us" and "you" and "you guys" and "all of us" is painful. And while being able to say "us" and not unintentionally include the speaker can be othering, it can also be a useful way of clarifying our language and avoiding generalisations, and might make us all more aware of when and whether we are including or excluding people, for good or bad.

Anyone have a suggestion for a new pronoun or two for English?

EDIT: Blogger, it appears, doesn't the Unicode combining diacritical marks that I've used to denote tone as the closest approximation to handwritten PinYin representations of Chinese. I'm changing all tone marks to the clumsy numbers for now, so that the Chinese bits will actually be legible instead of little blank boxes, and I'm going to register a complaint as soon as I get around to it, i.e. not tonight when I'm tired and grumpy because Blogger seems to have pretty pathetic support for any non-European language.