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Chinese kinship labels for the win https://blog.tutorabcchinese.com/chinese-learning-tips/famil...
Wait, do different people use the cousin words differently or is this page flat-out wrong? And not just wrong, but wrong about the exact term under discussion. This page says Táng vs. Biǎo is based on whether it's on your father's side or mother's side. But the whole point of the "or" in MothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter is that Táng is for the children of two male siblings, and Biǎo is for the children…
It’s not father’s side or mother’s side.
Tang 堂 is fathers brothers children. Every other cousin is 表 biao.
If you are a native English speaker and are surprised a relationship label might translate with difficulty into another language/culture, consider: Brother-in-law It’s my sibling’s husband, OR my spouse’s brother. In many non-English-speaking cultures, that juxtaposition appears bizarre.
I would be surprised to learn if most people regardless of language wouldn’t recognize the similarity of those two relationships.
If you are a native English speaker and are surprised a relationship label might translate with difficulty into another language/culture, consider: Brother-in-law It’s my sibling’s husband, OR my spouse’s brother. In many non-English-speaking cultures, that juxtaposition appears bizarre.
I would be surprised to learn if most people regardless of language wouldn’t recognize the similarity of those two relationships.
She was surprised to learn that we don't recognize the similarity of those relationships.
I suspect the appearing naturalness of this is all down to whether or not you grew up with it.
Why though? Where does this actually get used? This seems to represent two different relationships. The mother’s sibling could be a brother. For the father a sister is specified. What about the father’s brother’s younger daughter? The description says younger daughter in both cases but the name doesn’t specify. So what’s the class for the older daughter of the mother’s sibling or the father’s sister? And if age is re…
The first 2 letters of the string make it obvious:
"CNLabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter"
"CN"
These labels are often used in Chinese & similar relationship models. It comes from the dual consequence of tightknit multi-generation families & a dense symbol-derived language. In Chinese, you can derive the term for a given relative within 2 characters using this relationship model.
I’ve always been terrible at diagnosing family relationships, what would be the end result in english? ( or any other language ) Edit: or is it a word or phrase that doesn’t exist in English?
English so inefficient when expressing human relationships.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, do different people use the cousin words differently or is this page flat-out wrong? And not just wrong, but wrong about the exact term under discussion. This page says Táng vs. Biǎo is based on whether it's on your father's side or mother's side. But the whole point of the "or" in MothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter is that Táng is for the children of two male siblings, and Biǎo is for the children…
The page is incorrect. It’s not father’s side or mother’s side. Tang 堂 is fathers brothers children. Every other cousin is 表 biao.
the cousin differentiation is probably one of the more meaningless differentiations anyway - when addressing our cousins directly or within the family, we simply address them by ge or jie if they are our seniors, and directly by name if they are our juniors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agnatic[0] cultures placing great significance on who’s in line to inherit the family’s wealth and who’s not, is my guess. As a commenter in the thread two years ago noted[1], this represents (in Agnatic cultures) “female cousin who is not part of my close family (different last names)”. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnatic_seniority [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28716275
Oh, "different last names" is an interesting aspect. Someone else linked a page on Chinese kinship terms but it gave an incorrectly simplified definition for the same term so I didn't realize it was a match.
Responding to a variety of questions made over the years about this: This is a constant intended to be displayed after localizing the constant . Its localized value will primarily be displayed to users whose preferred languages have a short word describing the relationship. But it ALSO needs at least some comprehensible localization in EVERY language, because I can send you a vcard for myself labeling this specific t…