January 24, 2022 - Today I learned that Chinese has a 4th tā! tā is a pronoun which means “he, she, it”. The interesting thing about tā is that it is written using three separate characters depending on which a person is referring to; there’s a separate character for “he” (他), “she” (她) and “it” (它). However, they are all pronounced the same way (yes, even the same tone). So in speaking, the exact tā one is using can be ambiguous unless there’s extra context. The tā (祂) pictured that I found refers to a ‘divine being’ or ‘deity’. I imagine this tā isn’t used very often as this is my first time seeing it, but I’m not a native speaker nor do I use Mandarin on a daily basis. I also don’t use Mandarin in religious contexts. Also, I’m not surprised that I never saw it in Mainland China, where the government is very suspicious of religion as a whole…anyways, I learned about this tā because I saw it on a book at a Half Price Books