The rapid growth (and partial retreat) of “they” and “them” has gotten a lot of attention in recent years, but English is hardly the only language that has been experimenting with a gender-neutral singular pronoun. The French have tried fusing “il” (he) and “elle” (she) into “iel,” while the prettiest example to me is Portuguese’s “elu,” where “ele” is “he” and “ela” is “she.”
It’s happening in Mandarin Chinese as well, with the new character X也, which combines the Roman letter X with an element that’s present in the word for both “he” and “she.” It emerged in 2015, but until recently there was no graceful way to type it, a fact that slowed its adoption. That changed last September when the character was added to Unicode, the international standard of digital characters and symbols.
Many English speakers have trouble with “they” and “them” because using them as singular rather than plural challenges deeply entrenched speech habits. X也 may prove to be easier to adopt, since it’s pronounced “ta” — which is how the words for both “he” and “she” are pronounced. So in one sense the new word just formalizes something that was already familiar to every toddler.
That versatility of “ta” is an example of something intriguing about Mandarin: It leaves a lot to context. The language has no definite article, no “the.” Marking things as plural is often optional, as is indicating whether something happened in the past or the present. To say “The relationships among the Seven Warring States were constantly changing,” in Mandarin, you can put it as “Relationship between Warring States is constant change.”
Most languages nail things down with much greater specificity. One way they do so is by dividing nouns into genders. In Spanish, for example, “sombrero,” or hat, is masculine but “luna,” or moon, is feminine. Many languages also have complex rules about how to conjugate verbs, and some go even further, with declensions and the like, all to ensure that every word of a sentence functions in a specific and unmistakable way.
English is a different story. Like Mandarin, it leaves much up to context. Most of our words keep the same form regardless of how they function in a given sentence: A hat is a hat is a hat whether it’s the subject or the object or anything else. We barely even conjugate verbs, in most cases just adding an “s” for the second person singular. (I love; he loves.)
For Anglophones who are used to that model, in which meaning is deduced from context, languages in which meaning is derived more precisely, through detailed grammatical rules, can be challenging. That’s especially relevant at this time of year, when so many people make New Year’s resolutions to learn a new language. At a minimum a lot of them download language-learning apps, far more in January than in any other month.
If you’re one of the many people who contribute to the annual statistic, keep all this in mind as you begin your study. Learning a new language will require more than memorizing new words and expressions. Mastery comes when you wrap your head around patterns.
English has only three suffixes that indicate where in time something happens: “-s” for the present, “ing” for the ongoing and “-ed” for the past. The language you are learning will probably not be that relaxed. It’s also likely to be more persnickety than English about marking whether something is a subject instead of an object. And in your new language, pronouns probably change shape depending on whether they’re being used to describe doing something, like kicking a ball, or feeling something, like being cold. There’s lots of that in Russian, for example.
My New Year’s resolution is to work harder at learning Chinese. I’m not looking to become fluent — my goal is just to read the language at the level of an 8-year-old. That’s as good as I will ever need, or likely be able, to get.
To do so, I’ve been using ChinesePod, which I heartily recommend for learning to speak and, especially, understand the language, and the amazing Du Chinese for learning to read it. But whatever language you’re learning, sometimes you need to get beyond apps. In that vein, I have an unusual suggestion: Once you’ve achieved a modest level of comprehension, spend some time watching “Peppa Pig.”
Yes, I mean the children’s cartoon. It’s been dubbed into over 40 languages, and the translations are all over YouTube. Because the animation is so simple, the show is more about talking than action, and because it’s for children, the language is elementary and tidy. It’s a great way to get a sense of how to put everyday sentences together. In a one-minute scene, I counted six things about Mandarin that are key to basic communication, such as that question words like “how” go at the end of the sentence instead of the beginning; that prepositions can go after, rather than before, nouns; and that Mandarin uses little words like “ma,” “ba” and “a” to convey nuances that English communicates with expressions like “Go ahead and …” and “Ohhhh …!”
The convergence of “he,” “she” and “it” is another example of what makes Chinese distinct. I always encourage my linguistics students to see how many different ways languages can work. Look to Russian to see how extravagant a language can be in the ways it conveys meaning, and then Chinese to see how economical. Exhibit A? X也!
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