So we all know that English has quite a lot of third-person pronouns: he/him, she/her, they/them (singular or plural), it/its, and many more neopronouns coming out nowadays. It made me curious about such pronouns in other languages. Why? Because in my native language (Indonesian), there are only two third-person pronouns covering all of them: dia/-nya (singular) and mereka (plural). If you speak any other languages (be it your native one or those you've been learning), how do those languages handle third-person pronouns?
French has a bunch but the main ones are: il/elle (equivalent of he/she), ils/elles(multiple he/shes), vous (s is silent, used to address a group of folks or someone older/higher in rank etc.), nous (silent s again, used to address a group you are part of). There are some gender neutral neopronouns but they are tricky since all of french is made into masculine and feminine
Gender-neutral gang! Tagalog uses siya/niya/kaniya, Ilocano uses isu/na/kaniana; generally Austronesian langs all use a universal third person pronoun~ Only downside to that is that from time to time we get confused with other languages that do have grammatical gender, i.e. "Where did grandpa place her glasses?" and "She looks just like his mother". Interestingly enough this makes neopronouns more confusing, mostly because we don't even have the need for them in the first place :p
Okay, so for ASL, we keep it similar. But there's somethings people will find different. Index finger to chest - Me, hand spread out Mine, Hand pushing out Yours, Index finger pointing to person, You. Two hands spread out pushing away to a group Theirs. Basically, you gotta watch where they move there hands the position, how it's formatted, matters. With ASL it can be tricky, cause B to your mouth, means breakfast. If you swipe it to the left, it means "Bitch" *yes i've signed it to my brother before" And if you're signing Coffee, You have to move both your hands in a circular motion on top of one another, If you don't move the bottom hand it means Make out.
In my second language, Japanese, third person pronouns are rarely spoken. Instead, people simply use the person’s name. In things like books or TV shows you’ll sometimes see “kare” for “his” and “kanojo” for “her.” When speaking these words mean “boyfriend” and “girlfriend,” but they’re used as third person pronouns elsewhere.
German is actually quite straight-forward concerning that, though admittedly there is one confusing similarity. We've got "er", "sie" and "es", meaning "he", "she", and "it" respectively. As for the plural, our third person plural is also "sie" (they) and you can only discern its Numerus (number/whether or it refers to one person or more) by assessing how the verb is inflected. On top of that, we have a "Höflichkeitsform" used to address people deserving of our respect (e.g. because they rank higher in the hierarchy). In that case, we also use "Sie", but always with a capitalised "S". In this case, verbs are inflected as they would be according to the third person plural. An example: "Ich finde, dass sie damit aufhören muss." - I think that she must stop this. (third person singular) "Siehst du diese Gruppe? Meiner Meinung nach sehen sie irgendwie verdächtig aus..." - Do you see that group? I think they're somehow looking suspicious... (third person plural) "Das können Sie doch nicht ernst meinen!" - You can't be serious about this! ("Höflichkeitsform")