爾

ěr

you; that, those; final particle

Meaning

  • Second-person pronoun: "you" (singular or plural).
  • Distal demonstrative: "that," "those."
  • Adverbial/Qualitative: "thus," "so," "in this manner."

Grammar and usage

  • Final particle: When appearing at the end of a clause, it may function as a limiting particle ("merely," "only"), notably in the construction 爾而已, or as a modal/emotive marker used to soften tone, mark an exclamation, or indicate a rhetorical question.

Distinctions

  • Pronoun vs. Demonstrative: There is frequent ambiguity between its use as a second-person address (analogous to 汝) and its use as a distal demonstrative pointing toward a third party or object (analogous to 彼).

History and forms

  • Variants U+5C12 and U+5C14 are graphical evolutions with no known semantic shift.

Translator notes

  • The specific role of the glyph must be determined by syntactic position and whether a second party is being addressed.

Decontextualized translator aid. This page describes plausible lexical range; it does not choose what the glyph means in a particular passage.