Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

From: "Anton Sherwood"

> Many languages use the same word for `he' and `she'.  (Finnish and
> Swahili come to mind.)
And Hungarian.

> It's not a "mistake", merely an extreme example
> of the simple fact that different languages classify the universe
> differently.
> I have heard that the distinction in written chinese between <ta> `he'
> and <ta> `she' is a recent innovation, perhaps inspired by foreign
> languages.
I think so. Some turn o' the century holier-than-thou Westerner somewhere
said something to the effect, "Chinese is so primitive, it doesn't even have
words to distinguish 'he' and 'she'." Whereupon the Chinese did an "I'll
show you!" and whipped up pronouns that put the Eurolangs to shame:

ta1  he (plus "man" radical [usualy interpreted as male {since they're the
only ones that count :-)} but pretty much epicene)

ta1  she (plus "woman" radical)

ta1  it (neuter, different character, translationese has increased the usage
of this in places where English uses "it", but it does serve a similar
function to "it" in dummy structures where you need some sort of object)

ta1 it (plus "cow" radical) for animals

ta1 it, He (or others, depending on your religious proclivities; the
"divinity", "let it be known" radical [not the best terminology, I concede])
for God (I've only seen it in the Xtian sense).

Are there others? The point is, they're all pronounced "ta1", usage of these
characters is far from standard among the populace, and everyone seems to be
getting along just fine, thank you very much.

There's also "ni3" with the "woman" radical for a feminine "you", but this
usage seems to be almost exclusive to treacly love songs (Hey, baby, you
hurt me real bad.....; I can't live without yooouuu)

Kou

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