What's the difference between 跟 and 和 ?

[HashiriKata]

To further complicate things, how necessary is 和 (etc.) if you want to say A, B and C did this. Couldn't you just write them end on end?

I think it should be ok to go without 和/And in this case. Only that it'd sound a bit unusual because we're not used to this way. The 和/And used in cases like this does function as a signal for the end of a list of citation, and is fairly common in languages:

"John, Mary, I went to the park." would never sound as natural as

"John, Mary and I went to the park."

In the same way,

小王，老李和我姐姐,他们都去日本了 is more natural sounding than one without 和:

小王，老李，我姐姐他们都去日本了

[Lugubert]

Thanks! This is a question that I have had for some time, and I have found no clear answer in grammar books.

[anonymoose]

To further complicate things, how necessary is 和 (etc.) if you want to say A, B and C did this. Couldn't you just write them end on end?

Please comment on 小王，老李，我姐姐他们都去日本了

I think you can say this without 和 here because you have included 他们. 他们 is the grammatical subject of the sentence. 小王，老李，我姐姐 is just setting the context in which 他们 is to be understood.

If you did not include 他们, I think including 和 would be more necessary (but I'm sure someone will tell me that even then 和 can be omitted): 小王、老李和我姐姐都去日本了。

Anyway, this is just how it feels to me as a foreign learner. I could be totally wrong.