WhatsApp risks losing its most loyal customers: Indian uncles and aunties

Can someone explain the language phenomenon of referring to a set of people as "uncles and aunties"? I've ubiquitously heard this from expats and students from east Asian countries, and according to this article it seems to be normal usage in India as well.

In Russian (and various other languages of Eastern Europe), "uncle" and "aunt" can be used to address a stranger on the street. It comes off as a bit intimate or even childish. It doesn't suggest that the person you're addressing is related to you. If you don't know the name to address someone by, it's less brutish than the alternatives, "hey man" and "hey lady."

For example, in the greatest work of Russian literature (The Twelve Chairs), the main character enters the scene pursued by a street urchin who keeps asking him, "Uncle, gimme ten cents!" The urchin earns the immortal reply, perhaps the best-known line in all of modern prose: "Maybe you also want the keys to the apartment where the money is?"

But this "aunties" and "uncles" seems to be different. I get a sense that it suggests a circle of doting busybody relatives who dance around you all day to attend to your whims as the baby of the family. Or something like that. What does it mean?

The best way to describe Indian "uncles" and "aunties" is that they are collective nouns for anyone above your own generation who are not your parents or ancestors.

They could be related to your parents or friends of your parents or a random person on the street who is older. Kids literally walk into mom-and-pop shops and address the shopkeeper as uncle or aunty.

Yes, this is what I meant when I wrote that it sounds childish.

Adults calling other adults "uncle" in Russian sounds either infantile or patronizing. Which is why I assume the Asian usage norms are different.

It's an honorific and a sign of respect that is be paid between generations, within social circles where respect is due. It is used in particular by children and young people to refer to those of an older generation within the "circle of respect" of their parents.

A child will simply not be introduced in a familiar way to someone you don't trust or respect - they will be kept away. If the person is referred to for some reason, they'll be referred to as "that person" or somesuch.

When I ask my son to refer to someone as uncle or auntie, it means I'm signalling to him that they have some degree of standing in my life: they are a colleague, or friend, or acquaintance to whom I am asking him to show respect on my behalf.

An uncle or auntie is someone who "is known". By bestowing that title, and instructing your child to use it with them, you are granting them status in the eyes of your child, and segregating them explicitly from the general set of all older people.

When the term is used by adults, it naturally refers to the _even older_ generation of the elderly. So in this case, where the perspective of the writer is an adult perspective, it refers to the elderly.

Lastly, there's a subtle detail that should be made explicit. When it's used "in general" like it is in this title, it does not imply that I, or any reader, considers all of those people uncles and aunties personally. It's implicit in the usage that we are referring to "people who are uncle and aunties for those whom they are the uncles and aunties of".

I hope I've done a half-decent job, because the entire set of cultural associations around that word are hard to get across.

> It is used in particular by children and young people to refer to those of an older generation within the "circle of respect" of their parents.

There's such thing in Russian too. My parents had friends and they would come to our apartment every once in a while. We would call them all "uncle $name"