Gendered Pronouns in Mandarin

Today's episode is on gendered pronouns in Mandarin! Join us for a journey through thousands of years of Chinese language, featuring paleo-pronouns, neo-pronouns, and the complexities of expressing gender when your phone has a limited character set.

For those of you who would like a visual to go along with the Chinese characters we discuss in this episode, they are 他 (masculine/neutral tā), 她 (feminine tā), 牠 ("cow-tā"), 祂 ("God-tā"), and X也 (gender-neutral tā).

This episode was originally released on our Patreon in 2025.

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[Image: calligraphy of gender-neutral form of the Mandarin pronoun tā (X也)]