他她它

[robot_mel]

Today I was at the UW hospital at I walked past a piece of "art" on the wall that I noticed had Chinese characters in it. I looked and it simply had 我，你，他 I read through the explanation which went that a Chinese American artist who didn't know Chinese wanted to make something from her heritage after her child was born and so she based her art on the first few characters she learned from her flashcards. The sign referred to them as calligraphy but they really weren't. The ironic part was that she said the thing she liked best and the basis for her idea was that he she and it were all the same "symbol" in Chinese. Which of course they're not. They have the same pronunciation, Ta in first tone but the characters are 他她它. Now I know in a lot of places you can simply just use 他 but that doesn't mean the other characters for her and it don't exist!

Edit: I have since learned that the extra 她它 are more recent, past 100 years or so, so if they had said "traditionally they are the same" it would have been right.