妳 | nǐ

So what have we learned so far about Chinese pronouns? Like in many Indo-European languages, there are gender-specific third person pronouns in written Chinese: 他 “he” and 她 “she”. Unlike many Indo-European languages, spoken Chinese does not differentiate between “him” and “her”: both are pronounced the same (Pinyin: tā 🔊).

But that’s not all. Also unlike many Indo-European languages, written Chinese has gender-specific second person pronouns: 你 “you” (singular informal masculine) and 妳 “you” (singular informal feminine). In spoken Mandarin, there is no difference between 你 and 妳 (nǐ 🔊).

As you should have guessed by now, 妳 is derived from 你 by replacing 亻 with 女. According to Wiktionary,

This character is mostly used in traditional Chinese when referring to a female person. Although 妳 is rarely used in simplified Chinese, it may still be found in some contexts.

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她 | tā

In Mandarin Chinese, 她 (Pinyin: tā 🔊) is a personal pronoun “she” or “her”.

According to Wiktionary, 她 is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 女 “female”, “woman” and phonetic 也 (yě 🔊, which, however, sounds nothing like tā). This is the rare case when it is known who and when invented this character:

Originally a variant of 姐 (jiě, “elder sister”). Later repurposed as a feminine third-person pronoun influenced by European languages, with the glyph being the result of replacing the 人 (“person”) radical in 他 (tā) with 女 (“woman”). Linguist Liu Bannong is credited with coining this use around the 1910s.

Liu Bannong (1891—1934) also popularised its use by writing the lyrics for a 1930s “hit” song 教我如何不想她 (Jiào wǒ rúhé bùxiǎng tā, “Tell me how to stop thinking of her”) composed by Yuen Ren Chao.

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女 | nǚ

In Mandarin Chinese, 女 (Pinyin: nǚ 🔊) means “woman”, “daughter” or, when applied to people, “female”. A combination with 人 “people”, 女人 (nǚrén 🔊), means “(an adult) woman”, “wife” or “mistress”.

According to Ponte Ryūrui, 女 “is a pictograph of a woman kneeling on the ground, shown with her arms entangled, holding a garment” while Wiktionary says that it is

a woman with breasts kneeling or standing. In modern form turned on left side: enclosed area is remnant of left breast (character’s left, depicted woman’s right), while right breast has disappeared. Graphically cognate to 母 (mǔ, “mother”), which has developed similarly, but also includes dots for nipples and has retained both breasts.

I prefer thinking of 女 as two entangled Greek letters ν (nu) which, incidentally, helps me to remember its pronunciation.

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母 | mǔ

In Mandarin Chinese, 母 (Pinyin: mǔ 🔊) means “mother”, or, when applied to an animal, “female”.

This character has evolved from a pictogram of a woman with rather exaggerated breasts with nipples. The historical forms of 母 show a standing or kneeling female figure. In the modern form, the woman’s chest is rectangular and rotated 90° so the whole affair now looks more like a chest of drawers.

More photos related to women and sea glass @ Shutterstock.