What about 其?

xiaophil
February 10, 2010, 02:38 AM posted in I Have a Question

I know that 其 is definitely more written than oral, but even so, I wonder if 其 is sometimes used by regular people in daily life other than in Chinese idioms and of course 其他.  So... can anyone give me insight into the nature of 其 in oral Chinese? 

I hope not as when I see it in texts, I have to really think carefully about it in order to understand its function.  I have noticed that not even my textbooks are willing to tackle this word.  Perhaps that is because I have never used an advanced textbook.

Anyway... any thoughts? 

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simonpettersson
February 10, 2010, 04:03 AM

I'm assuming you're talking about times when it's used in isolation? Because there are more bigrams than 其他 that uses 其. Like 尤其, 其实 and 其中.

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xiaophil

Yes, you are right, in isolation.

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xiaophil
February 10, 2010, 04:49 AM

Yes, you are right, in isolation.

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oxygem
February 10, 2010, 07:55 AM

其 is a classical Chinese language particle being used in isolation in written language. And the meaning of the words could be function words', such as "perhaps;probably;most likely","can;may;should", "yet;still;if" or "very",etc.  In classical oral language, It is also a pronoun that means "he","she","it",or "they" ; "his","her","its" or "their".

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changye
February 10, 2010, 03:21 PM

As oxygem wrote above, "其" really has a lot of meanings and usages. Surprisinly, one of my dictionaries shows 43 definitions for the character. For your information, the etymological origin of "其" is the shape of "簸箕" (bo4ji1, dustpan, winnowing fan), and I guess this is the very reason why the character "collected" so many meanings, hehe.

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xiaophil
February 11, 2010, 02:39 AM

Changye and Oxygem,

Thanks for the insight.  I take it 其 isn't used much in oral Chinese?  I haven't ever noticed it, but then again I'm not sure I would have.