In traditional Mandarin Chinese, 牠 (Pinyin: tā 🔊) is a third-person singular pronoun for animals. So it’s a different “it” from 它 “it”.
牠, just like 他 and 她, is a phono-semantic compound, in this case of semantic 牜, a radical form of 牛 “ox”, “cow” etc., and phonetic 也.
牠 is not found in simplified Chinese. Instead, the same 它 is used for all non-human objects, animate or not.
More photos related to animals, hanzi and calligraphy @ Shutterstock.
In Mandarin Chinese, 牛 (Pinyin: niú 🔊) is a noun that is often translated as “ox” but is a general name for bovine animals (genus Bos, family Bovidae). To be more specific, Chinese uses compounds, for example:
The Ox is one of the twelve-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac and is associated with the earthly branch 丑. 牛 is also the name of a Chinese constellation located near the European constellation of Capricorn.
Many historical forms of this character look like cow’s head complete with horns and ears. I think gnu (another bovid, although not Bos) is a good mnemonic to remember pronunciation of 牛. For more physics-inclined, 牛 is short for 牛顿 / 牛頓 (Niúdùn), “newton” (SI unit of force). 牛肉 (niúròu 🔊) means “beef”.
More photos related to cattle, buffalo, bulls, cows, beef, zodiac and sea glass @ Shutterstock.
