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 generallyOk 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.
As a native speaker, the 人家 used in the example definitely means “I” in a real life conversation. It’s… complicate, but usually, you need a subject for 人家 to reflect on. Let me break the situation down (chinese is a very circumstantial language):
Using the zombie movie as example, if someone suggests to watch a zombie movie, and you reply “人家不喜歡殭屍電影", it definitely means “I don’t like zombie movie” because there is no obvious target person in the previous conversation, so 人家 here refers back to the speaker themselves.
If someone in the group says they don’t like zombie movie, but the person who suggests it still insists, you can say “人家不喜歡殭屍電影", which means “They/he/she don’t like zombie movie”, as a form of support toward the person who says they don’t like it. Since another person before you just states their opinion, so when you say 人家 after them, it refers back to that person.
And we do say “有人不喜歡殭屍電影" as in “Someone doesn’t like zombie movie” if you know someone in the group doesn’t like zombie movie but either you want to notice this first or you want to voice for them. Actually, in this situation, you can use this line as an
ambiguous
way to mean “I don’t like zombie movie” since “someone in this group” apparently includes you. But usually, when you use the line like this, it often sounds rather salty
PS: when 人家 is used as “I”, it is usually used by woman in a diminutive way, usually only when the speaker is being with close friends and/or wanting to sound “cute” (it’s similar to the usage of the japanese first person pronoun “atashi” in compared to “watashi”). We don’t really use it as an every-day first person pronoun.
A Force Sensitive Phasesixer 