她

她 (radical 38, 女+3, 6 strokes, cangjie input 女心木 (VPD), four-corner 4441₂, composition ⿰女也)

• KangXi: page 255, character 5
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 6046
• Dae Jaweon: page 518, character 5
• Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 2, page 1029, character 2
• Unihan data for U+5979

Phono-semantic compound (形聲) : semantic 女 (“female, woman”) + phonetic 也 (OC *laːlʔ).

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 (Bi, 2013).

她

1. she, her

   她去了。  ―  Tā qù le.  ―  She went away.

   我認識她。 / 我认识她。  ―  Wǒ rènshi tā.  ―  I know her.

   • 那人說：「你所賜給我、與我同居的女人，她把那樹上的果子給我，我就吃了。」 [MSC, trad.]
     那人说：“你所赐给我、与我同居的女人，她把那树上的果子给我，我就吃了。” [MSC, simp.]

     From: 新標點和合本 (Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation), 創世記 (Genesis) 3:12

     Nà rén shuō: “Nǐ suǒ cì gěi wǒ, yǔ wǒ tóngjū de nǚrén, tā bǎ nà shù shàng de guǒzi gěi wǒ, wǒ jiù chī le.” [Pinyin]

     And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

• Occasionally, 他 (tā) may be used for both genders.

No major Chinese dialect distinguishes between “he”, “she” and “it” in spoken form, and Mandarin 他／她／它 (tā) is the only instance where such a distinction is made in written form. Thus see the table below for words for “she” in other varieties of Chinese.

• 妳／你 (nǐ, “(feminine) you”)

(uncommon “Hyōgai” kanji)

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.

• On (unclassified): ち (chi), じ (ji), しゃ (sha), た (ta), い (i)
• Kun: あざる (azaru)

她 (tha)

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.