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TIL: Chinese had no gendered pronouns until the 20th century (youtu.be)
submitted 3 months ago by cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml to c/china@lemmygrad.ml
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Did you know that Chinese didn't have a word for "She" until about 100 years ago? In fact, Chinese operated without a female 3rd person pronoun for thousands of years, and it wasn't a problem -- until interaction with the west. Watch this video to learn the fascinating (albeit winding) history of Chinese gendered pronouns.

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[-] Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 3 months ago

We're discussing gendered pronouns, not grammatical gender. Mandarin didn't have gendered pronouns until the 20th century.

And adding gendered pronouns was a more or less conscious choice.

this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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