Chinese pronouns (Chinese: 代词; pinyin: dàicí) differ somewhat from their English counterparts.
For instance, there is no differentiation in the spoken language between "he", "she" and "it" (though a written difference was introduced after contact with the West), and pronouns remain the same whether they are the subject or object of a sentence.
Chinese Language further lacks a distinction between the possessive adjective ("my") and possessive pronoun ("mine"); both are formed by appending the particle 的 de. Some honorifics exist in the language, but modern Chinese, especially in the spoken language.
There are just three basic Chinese pronouns in spoken Mandarin:
I, me - wǒ - 我
You - nǐ - 你
He, Him / She, Her / It - tā
Plurals
Plurals are formed by adding 'men' at the end of the pronoun:
We, Us - wǒ men - 我們
You - nǐ men - 你們
They, Them - tā men - 他們
When speaking to elders or someone in authority, it is more polite to address them formally with nín 您 instead of the less formal nǐ - 你.
Written Forms
He, she, and it all have the same sound - tā, but they use different characters for writing:
he - 他
she - 她
it - 它
In spoken Mandarin, the context of the sentence will usually (but not always!) tell you whether the speaker is referring to a man, a woman or a thing.
