- 1他們、她們、它們（口語）
In easy, spoken English, them often sounds like 'em. You hear it right after a verb: Get 'em! I already told 'em. People write the missing bit with an . It is friendly and a bit rough — fine in songs, comics, and chat, not fine in homework. Though actually, it is older than a lazy them. It comes from an old English word hem, not from cutting the front off them. The them we write came in from Old Norse. Today everyone treats 'em as the same as them, and that is how you should read it.
'em 是 them 在口語裡的快速唸法，通常接在動詞後面，例如 「Get 'em!」（抓住他們！）、 「I already told 'em.」（我已經告訴他們了。）書寫時用撇號標出省略的部分。這種寫法很口語，帶點隨便、粗獷，適合歌詞、漫畫和聊天，但不適合作業。
它其實有自己的來歷：來自古英文的 hem，並不是把 them 的前面砍掉而來的；我們現在寫的 them 則是從古諾斯語借進來的。今天大家都把 'em 當成 them，讀的時候照這樣理解就好。
From the word’s history
From earlier hem, from Middle English hem, from Old English heom 'them'; now often treated as a clipped form of them.
源自古英文 heom「他們」，現在常被當成 them 的縮寫。
組成From earlier hem, from Middle English hem, from Old English heom (“them”), a form of hie (“they”). Later people treated it as a short them, but them itself comes from Old Norse, not from this old English word. Cousins outside English include Dutch hun and German ihnen.
同家族的字
- themtoday 'em does the job of them in casual speech, even though it grew from older hem, not from them
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
'empron/əm/
- 1
Them (now only in unstressed position).
- Some are become great, ſome atcheeues greatneſſe, and ſome haue greatneſſe thruſt vppon em.
- Toute la Chine eſt diviſée en ſeize Provinces qui valent mieux chacune que de grands Royaumes. Il y en a dix vers le Midi ſçavoir Yunnan , Quanſi, Canton, Fuquiem, Chequiam, Nankin , Kiamſi , Huqüam, Suſcüem & Quicheu.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。