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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

他

tā
he; him; she; her
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 1
  • radical 人
  • 5 strokes

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Origin

「他」在字形上屬於形聲字，由意符「亻」（人）與聲符「也」構成。在字義方面，根據《國語辭典》，它可以用作第三人稱代詞，指代你我以外的人；也可用於表示「別的」、「另外的」或「其餘的事」。此外，它也能用在及物動詞後作為賓語，此時不具備固定意義。

在語言演變上，現代漢語中「他、她、它」這種第三人稱代詞的用法，是在漢代之後才出現在口語文本中，並在官話方言中取代了古典漢語的「其」與「之」。從中古漢語到現代的音韻演變並不規律，按理說預期的反映音應為 tuō，有時在文學語境中用於表示古典意義的「其他」，但在大多數官話方言中，其讀音為 tā。

Confidence: high · written by gemma4:26b, checked statement-by-statement against the sources below.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • soundChinese也 “Particle used at the end of copular constructions involving a nominal predicate; to be (although no…”

Words built on it: 其他, 他們

Wiktionary etymology text

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *l̥ʰaːl): semantic 亻 (“man”) + phonetic 也 (OC *laːlʔ).

Corrupted form of 佗 (OC *l̥ʰaːl, *l'aːl), which is found in Zuozhuan.

Etymology not clear (Schuessler, 2007). Perhaps cognate with 誃 (OC *l'al, *l̥ʰjalʔ, “to separate”).

The modern sense of "he, she, it" only emerged after the Han period in colloquial passages, and displaced classical 其 (OC *ɡɯ) and 之 (OC *tjɯ) in Mandarin dialects (Pulleyblank, 1995).

The phonological development from Middle Chinese was irregular. The expected reflex is tuō, which is sometimes used in literary contexts for the classical "other" sense, but in most Mandarin dialects it is read like tā.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Meanings

character
  1. he; him; she; her
  2. A dummy pronoun. Compare object pronoun 之 (zhī)
  3. other; another
  4. a surname

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 第三人稱代詞。指你我以外的第三人。
  2. 別的、另外的。 例：他日、他人
  3. 別的方面或其餘的事。 例：其他、顧左右而言他
  4. 用在及物動詞後當賓語，無固定意義。 例：唱他幾句、喝他幾杯

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 他 was written 字形演變

  1. 他 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  2. 他 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 他 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • etymagent (local gemma4:26b) — Generated
  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 他