The NEW Chinese Gender-Neutral Pronoun EXPLAINED

If you have been on the internet recently, you may have come across this CNN article explaining a new Chinese character that has been added to the Unicode system which controls how language is displayed on computers. [music] It's a genderneutral pronoun. This is a reworking of the character ta, which can be written either like this, in which case it means he, or like this, in which case it means she. But the new character has an X on the left hand side instead of the usual radicals for either person or woman that exist in the male and female variants. So what is the story behind this character [music] and why was it needed or is it needed at all? In this video, you're going to find out. This is China's new [music] genderneutral pronoun explained. So, for some time, people who don't want to use gendered pronouns have been using a couple of different ways to write the word ta, which means he or she, or I guess actually they or them. That's how they say it in English. One way is to just write [music] t a using English letters, which gives you just the pronunciation since he and she are pronounced exactly the same in Chinese. It's kind of lame though since you're adding English letters into the middle of a Chinese sentence. But that is one way of doing it. Just don't get confused when someone actually means teaching assistant and they write TA. So then they came up with another way to write it like this. Xy. It adds an English letter X to the left side of the character. Yeah. Which on its own means also but makes up the right hand side of the T pronoun. So the idea is to represent a new character that would still be pronounced ta but has an x as the radical instead of what would normally be on the left. But what has now changed is that soon if you want to type this character on a computer, you won't need to use an English letter x anymore because in the latest update to the uniode han characters, this character was added with a small x on the left hand side. Unicode character 323bf. The X, although it doesn't appear in the 214 radicals that are recognized in modern written Chinese, actually looks like it is based off of a Chinese character, which is an old way of writing the number five or woo. It also looks very similar to ye meaning to regulate. And you can see that it is used on the left hand side of some characters like this one meaning to mo. So I think the radical might actually be from that one. I'm not totally sure. Or it could be that when you type them, they're actually exactly the same. So it doesn't even matter. Anyway, let me know if you actually know the answer to that down in the comments below. But actually, it's not even intended to be that because it's just intended to come from the English letter X, as in gender X, like genderneutral. If you try to type this new character now, though, you won't be successful because there aren't any fonts yet that actually include it, and you just see an empty box when it's displayed on a website. So, it's probably going to take a while before it actually becomes usable. But, is this really necessary? And is this actually respectful to the Chinese language to mix in ideas from the English language to make up a new Chinese character? Well, let's look at Chinese pronouns throughout history. And the thing you discover very quickly is that in the past, for thousands of years, Chinese did not have gendered third person pronouns. Let me explain. So if we go back and look at classical written Chinese in the time of Confucious, so like 5,000 BC or so, the pronouns they used in the third person were j meaning it, him or her. And they also used chi meaning its, his or hers. Okay, the possessive pronoun. And you can see both of [music] these pronouns in this passage from the analex of confucious. Talented ones take lust and beauty lightly. In serving their parents, they fully exert their abilities. In serving their lord, they fully devote [music] their life. You can see that character chi meaning theirs, his or hers used twice there in their abilities and their [music] life which is actually written their body but it means their life. In modern Chinese, that [music] would be two characters. Tarder to make it a possessive pronoun. But in classical Chinese, it [music] is just one character. Next part. When they interact with friends, they honor their friend's trust. Though it's said that they have not learned anything, I would say that they definitely have. And you can see the other third person pronoun there, which means he, she, or it. And the context tells you what [music] it is specifically referring to. In this case, it's probably referring to a man since it's talking about someone who is studying, and women were not generally educated in [music] ancient China. But in another case, this character could mean a woman. If you'd already established in the sentence leading up to it that it was something to do with women, then you'd assume that it was a woman. Later in the Northern and Southern Dynasty's period, and going into the Tong Dynasty, there was the character Chu, which was another genderneutral pronoun. And this is where the character Koi in Cantonese comes from. And yes, when you say it in Cantonese, uh, it's pronounced koi. In Mandarin, it would be also [music] pronounced ch. And it is the standard third person pronoun in Cantonese. And it is genderneutral. As history developed around the tongue dynasty, we get the character ta being used as a genderneutral [music] pronoun meaning he or she. This character originally meant other. For example, in this passage from the records of the grand historian or [music] thus the Duke of P led his troops away by night via another route. In this [music] passage, t means other or alternative. In Chinese poetry, you may see terms like tu, which means someday, literally another day. But later in history, we do start seeing it used as [music] a pronoun. However, it does not specify male or female. You can see the character actually has the character for person as the radical on the left hand side, not man or woman. So it just [music] means a person, any gender. This continued all the way up until almost recent history. [music] This character is used to refer to both male and female characters in the classic 18th century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, Hong Moon, for example. But how did we get to this character now meaning he and having another character with a female radical meaning her? So as western powers started to encroach on China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Japan adopted many western technologies before China which led to Japan temporarily being stronger militarily. Many Chinese started seeing western things as progressive and traditional Chinese ways as backwards. This was true in a technological sense. That's why in the lateQing dynasty they conducted the self-strengthening movement in China orang from 1861 to 1885 [music] where China modernized with western style ship building telephone systems and railways but as the 20th century rolled around many people saw European ways as progressive in a cultural sense too. The new culture movement or sin yunong was a revolt against Confucianism which had [music] basically run China for 2,000 years. This culminated in the May 4th movement or Wu Yunong where 3,000 students gathered on Tiennaman Square in Beijing to protest on May 4th, 1919. These were Chinese nationalists, but they were opposed to traditional values and looked abroad to inspiration from the West to strengthen their cause. One of their targets for reform was language. They advocated replacing written classical Chinese with the spoken vernacular or biwen literally meaning [music] plain speech which did happen. Then they looked to European languages to further reform Chinese and European languages had gendered pronouns. Thus in the 1920s they started to use the original tar with a person radical on the left to mean him or he and a couple of other characters for she or her. One of them was ta with a female character on the left and another was yei which would have actually been more advantageous in a way since it has a different pronunciation. So you'd be able to tell the difference in spoken conversation [music] not just written text. There were intense debates but in the end tar won in a kind of compromise between the traditionalists and the [music] progressives. So you were still genderneutral in speech but gender specific in writing. At the same time, they also brought in several other characters pronounced tar. So you have tar meaning inanimate objects. You have this tar meaning gods or deities. And you have this tar meaning animals. [music] Those are all the third person pronouns for those things. You can still see all of these used in Taiwanese Mandarin. But in simplified Chinese from mainland China, the only one that survives is this tar, [music] which is used for both inanimate objects and animals. And under the CCP, they're all officially atheist anyway, so they don't need the one for gods, I guess. But now, it seems that we have gone full circle and it isn't progressive to be gendered anymore. It's progressive [music] to be genderneutral. And thus, there are Chinese people who want a genderneutral [music] pronoun again. Now, in my opinion, using XY is not really the answer to this. What would make a lot more sense is to actually create a new character for he or him that combines nan [music] and yeah just like the female one does. So you have the exact same system to make the male ta and the female ta and then you convert the original ta back to its original meaning a genderneutral third person pronoun. What they're trying to do here is use an X, which comes from what they've done in English and other European languages to try to create genderneutral words like Latinics, which only [music] 3% of US Hispanics actually use, and probably even less people in South America use. Then we also have Filipin, [music] which was created in the West, and actual Filipino people don't seem to even like it. It seems that their pronouns are already genderneutral. [music] So having an X in there in Chinese really just feels wrong to me. like trying [music] to take a western idea and forcing it into Chinese. But I'm not against a genderneutral pronoun at all. It's useful for those people who want to [music] be referred to in a neutral way. And just when you want to talk about someone that you don't know the gender of, you could use a gender neutral pronoun. I know. Let's all just use the Cantonese pronoun. Clay wants to be genderneutral. All right, guys. That is the video for today. Please subscribe if you're new. And if you want to support us through joining the channel as a member, please hit that join button down below next to the subscribe button. It's just $4.99 per month and it keeps helping us produce content [music] like this. Of course, if you just want to subscribe, you'll still be able to see all of our YouTube videos for free. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.