I was thinking about the Chinese pronoun “renjia” 人家 and how useful it is and how difficult its connotations are to translate succinctly into English.
Okay so “renjia” literally means “person-home” and here’s what it can mean:
1. me (the speaker) 2. you (the spoken to) 3. somebody else (who is there) 4. somebody else (who is not there) 5. people generally
Ok you’re probably thinking “WTF that sounds confusing as hell and the opposite of useful”? But no! It is extremely useful if you WANT to be ambiguous/coy/demure/humble and (potentially) manipulate people! (It also codes as feminine IMO within Chinese culture, YMMV.)
Let’s say I’m hanging out with my friends Anne, Bruce, Charlene, and David. David suggests going to see a zombie movie.
I reply, “Renjia doesn’t like zombie movies. Let’s see something else.”
In that context, it would mean “somebody here doesn’t like zombie movies”. I might be referring to myself, or I might be referring to someone else who is there, without actually naming them.
Maybe I’m embarrassed that I don’t like zombie movies: this way I can make my objection known without committing to it. Or, maybe I know that Bruce hates them, but is the kind of person who won’t speak up for himself and who’ll feel bad if we don’t go to something just because of him? Now I’ve covered for Bruce, AND Bruce doesn’t have to feel guilty, because I could have been talking about myself or another person in the group.
See in English if you said “somebody here doesn’t like zombie movies,” that would be odd, somebody would probably say, “who?” and it would also imply IMO that the somebody wasn’t yourself.
Anyway if you’re a person (*cough* like me) who finds it hard to speak up for yourself as yourself in groups, it’s an extremely useful social navigational tool. Some women also use renjia habitually.
It’s a sociolinguistic thing and an example of how languages adapt to cultural needs (or vice versa if you want to get all Sapir-Whorf up in here).
This is only one possible use of renjia, you could write a dang thesis on it and somebody probably has.
Edit: “Qiu, Miao-Jin (2000) Chengdaici Renjia de Yuyi ji Yuyong Yanjiu [A Semantic and Pragmatic Study of ‘Renjia’ in Mandarin Chinese], MA Thesis, National Taiwan Normal University.”
I KNEW IT
