Sunday 20 March 2022

First Second Third Persons

It is not possible to perfect your Teochew until you know all the three persons as shown in the chart below. 

We, excluding the listener, is said differently by people from different areas. People from Teochew 潮州市 will say ung2, people from TêngHai 澄海 will say ng2, people from Swatow 汕頭市 will say uang2. 

As for you [second person], people from Dio'Io 潮陽 will say lu2 and this is the closest to Middle Chinese. Hokkien people say "li" and other parts of our homeland say "le2". 

You may then say how about nang5 人 as in ren2 人 in Mandarin - well nang5  just mean people and thus not included in this set of three persons. 

 

English

Teochew

Mandarin

First Person

I

ua2 

wo3

we: excluding the listener

uang2 ung2 ng2 

wo3men5 我們

we: including the listener

nang2 

zan2men5 咱們

Second Person

you

le2 lu2 

ni3

you all [plural] 

ning2

ni3men5 你們

Third Person

he, she, it

i1 

ta1 她 

they

i1nang7 伊儂

ta1men5 他們 它們 她們

other people

bag8nang7 別儂

bie2ren5 別人

everybody

dai6gê1 大家

da4jia1 大家

 Do remember the following:

nang2  means we - both the speaker and the listener 

nang5  means people 

nang7  has to have another character in front of it referring to other people or they

It took me a long time to understand this over 15 years ago when I started learning Teochew.

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