This is where a few basic Chinese concepts come in handy:
- Spoken Mandarin is genderless, written Chinese has Gender expressed in the radicals
- Knowledge of radicals will tell you the appropriate
Tā
to use
I like using yellowbridge.com for looking up etymology, stroke order, radicals, etc. for each character: http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-etymology.php?zi=%E7%89%A0
他
The radical, 人, makes this pronoun for him
她
The radical, 女, makes this pronoun for her
祂
The radical, 示, make this pronoun for God
牠
and 它
were merged together. 牠
refers to animals, as you can tell by the radical 牛 (cow). And 它
refers to inanimate objects.
And 们 men
makes the subject/noun plural.
So, in the context of your sentence, No they don't; they only sell stationary
, you would use 它们
.
他们
, which implys the people (owner or sales man) of the store.它们不卖
is weird,sell
's subject should be human.