彼・彼女・あいつ: "He/She/Them": Third-Person Pronouns in Japanese

Introduction

I hate to start the lesson out this way but, we've got a serious problem. That person is back. Yeah, I know. We're in trouble. I think the best thing to do might be to ignore them completely. That's just mean? Well, they're just awful.

Today's lesson is all about third-person pronouns in Japanese. Wa-hoo!

Who is this... third person?

Believe it or not, a "third-person pronoun" is not a word you use to refer to someone who keeps inviting themselves along on all of your dates. No no. A third-person pronoun is something like "he", "she" or "them". We use these a lot in English to replace people's names and keep from sounding redundant.

Japanese too, uses third-person pronouns (wherein they're called 「3人称代名詞さんにんしょうだいめいし」), but as usual, things are a bit different from English. Today we're going to cover some of the most common and/or useful ones, so you can properly refer to that person.