Example sentences

wǒ我men们zǒu走ba吧。

Let's go.

wǒ我men们yī一qǐ起chī吃fàn饭。

Let's eat together.

About this word

我 is "I" and 们 is the plural marker for people. 我们 is "we, us". The rule for 们 is narrow: it attaches to personal pronouns and to human nouns you are grouping or addressing. So 我们, 你们, 他们, 老师们, 同学们 all work. It never attaches to things, so 书们 and 桌子们 are impossible; plural objects are handled with numbers and measure words instead (三本书). In speech 我们 often stands in for "I", which softens a claim.

The story behind the character

我

In the oracle bone inscriptions 我 was a weapon: a shaft with a row of teeth running along one edge. The word for "I" sounded like the word for that thing, so scribes borrowed the graph and never gave it back, the same trick that turned 八 into eight. You write an ancient blade every time you refer to yourself.

们

们 makes a pronoun plural. 我 becomes 我们 we, 你 becomes 你们, 他 becomes 他们. It can also attach to nouns for people, as in 老师们 or 同学们, usually when you are addressing the group directly. That is the whole range. It never goes on things, so 书们 is nonsense, and it never combines with a number, so there is no 三个们.

Related words