The "third person pronouns" in Japanese, san'ninshou daimeishi 三人称代名詞, are a bit complicated. The words kare 彼 and kanojo 彼女 mean "he" and "she," respectively, but they also mean "boyfriend" and "girlfriend," respectively. There's no "it" pronoun in Japanese. Often, someone is referred to in third person neutrally, by the noun phrase "that person," ano hito あの人, ano ko あの子, or aitsu あいつ. Sometimes, by yatsu やつ, which refers to an individual person or thing. Japanese is a pronoun dropping language, which means there are sentences you'd use "he" or "she" in English that you wouldn't use a pronoun in Japanese.
GrammarJapanese doesn't have separate subject and object pronouns. The word kare means both "he" as subject and "him" as object. The word kanojo means both "she" and "her."
These words are turned into possessive third person pronouns through the no の particle, which creates no-adjectives.
These words are turned into plural through the pluralizing suffixes ~tachi ~達 and ~ra ~ら.
These words don't mean "they" are all male or female, but that there's one male person, one kare, or one female person, one kanojo, and she's part of a group that we're referring to.
In Japanese, it's not necessary to use a pronoun if it's implicit who we're referring to. For example, when answering a question:
By the same principle, Japanese doesn't have a pronoun "it." The fact we're talking about "it" is implicit.
Boyfriend and GirlfriendThe words kare and kanojo can also mean "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" in Japanese, respectively. Besides them:
The word kareshi is preferred to say "boyfriend."
Some example phrases:
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