Definitions
(pronoun)
I; me; my
Etymology
Pictograph of a weapon with a forked blade and long handle. The meaning "I; me" is a phonetic loan.
About
The character "我", which now exclusively means "I" or "me", originally represented a type of ancient halberd or a weapon with serrated blades, a meaning completely lost in its modern usage. Its structure is a cohesive pictograph of this implement, typically analyzed as combining a component showing a hand on the left with the representation of the blade or spearhead on the right. This martial object’s name was phonetically borrowed during the classical period to serve as the first-person pronoun, effectively displacing earlier terms, a common linguistic process where a graph is adopted for its sound rather than its meaning. Over time, this borrowed usage became universal, and the character’s form, which remains identical in both traditional and simplified orthographies, stabilized to denote solely the self, fully shedding its original martial connotation to become the primary grammatical signifier of the individual.
Etymology Hide
Example Sentences Hide
我的名字是小明。
我喜欢吃苹果。
我每天去学校。
我有一个幸福的家庭。
我们一起学习中文。
因为下雨，我留在家里。
如果我有多一点时间，我会去旅行。
虽然我已经学了三年中文，但是我还需要更多练习。