them
pron.the group of people, animals, or things you are talking about. You use this word when they are the ones receiving an action.
pron.the third-person plural object pronoun. Used as the direct or indirect object of a verb or the object of a preposition to refer to two or more people or things previously mentioned.
“I saw my friends and waved to them.”
“If you find the keys on the table, please bring them to me in the kitchen.”
“The manager interviewed several candidates yesterday and plans to contact them regarding the final decision by the end of the week.”
Acts as the object form of 'they'; also increasingly used as a gender-neutral singular object pronoun.
Learners sometimes use the subject pronoun 'they' after a preposition instead of the object pronoun 'them'.
Etymology tree Old Norse þeimbor. Middle English þem English them From Middle English þem, from Old Norse þeim.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
For Mandarin speakers Mandarin lacks the /ð/ phoneme; speakers substitute the voiced alveolar plosive /d/ or the voiceless /s/, producing /dem/ or /sem/.
它们 (tā men) means “they / them (used specifically for inanimate objects or animals)” — Mandarin distinguishes between human '他们' and non-human '它们' in writing. Learners may mistakenly believe 'them' only refers to people or over-correct by avoiding it for objects.
Mandarin third-person pronouns (他 tā, 她 tā, 它 tā) do not inflect for case, so learners often use the subject form 'they' in the object position where 'them' is required.
For Japanese speakers Japanese phonology lacks the /ð/ phoneme, so speakers substitute the alveolar plosive /d/. This causes 'them' /ðem/ to be produced as /dem/, occasionally leading to confusion with the word 'dam'.
Japanese is a pro-drop language where the object is frequently omitted if understood from context. Consequently, learners often drop the object pronoun 'them' in sentences like 'I like them', producing 'I like' (suki desu) instead.