>>21625981>They have stuff like 彼 and 彼女, but it's not used very much during regular conversation.Japanese has a set of three common words 此れ (kore), 其れ (sore) and 彼 (are).
此れ means "thing close to me, distant from you" (translates 1:1 with English "this"). 其れ means "thing close to you, distant from me" (usually translates as "that"), and 彼 means "thing distant from both of us" (translates as "that" or "it").
They have possessive forms ending in -no. E.g. "kono pen" = "this pen".
人 means person - most common readings are "hito" on its own, or "jin" in Sinic compounds.
男 means man - most common readings are "otoko" on its own, or "dan" in Sinic compounds.
女 means woman - most common readings are "onna" on its own, or "jo" in Sinic compounds.
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The formal way of referring to another person is "ano hito" (or "ano otoko"/"ano onna" if you want to be more specific). Substitute kono/sono as appropriate.
Now, when using 彼 to refer to a person, it's pronounced "kare" rather than "are". Likewise 彼の___ when pronounced "kano" rather than "ano" means "that well-known ___".
Everyone was called "kare" until fairly recently. Until Western books started being imported into Japan and translators began struggling with them, because languages like English used so many gendered words that translating them as gender-neutral would make things nonsensical. So they coined new terms by sticking 男 or 女 on the end. Like 王 (ou; a ruler) and 王女 (oujo; a female ruler).
As part of this, 彼の女 (kano onna) was contracted to 彼女 (kanojo), which is now generally translated into English as "she". It's usually understood nowadays that when you say 彼 you mean "he", but it's also used in situations where an English speaker might call someone "they" or "it". And while the plural of kanojo is "kanojo-ra", it's enough of a mouthful that people usually just refer to a group of girls as "kare-ra" unless speaking formally.
In theory the direct Japanese translation of "he" would be 彼男 (kanodan), but... this isn't an actual word, people don't use it.
