Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

developer.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 276 posts

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#181

Post by petesergeant »

SilasX wrote: post #99
mercutio2 wrote: post #86

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.

And don’t forget the kink that, in Breaking Bad, Walt uses the term to refer to his spouse’s sibling’s husband.

I absolutely do refer to my spouse's sibling's husband as my brother-in-law, I don't think that's that unusual?

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#182

Post by adastra22 »

bandyaboot wrote: post #90
mercutio2 wrote: post #86

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.

What similarity? I seriously don’t see it.

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#183

Post by adastra22 »

gweinberg wrote: post #104
SilasX wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don’t forget the kink that, in Breaking Bad, Walt uses the term to refer to his spouse’s sibling’s husband.

Think about it this way: your brother in law is your child's uncle.

Most languages don’t have a word as generic as “uncle” in this context.

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#184

Post by throwaheyy »

oefrha wrote: post #157
smeej wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has to have been 20-ish years ago now (pre-smartphone/pocket internet), but I was traveling in Europe and my friends and we stayed in a hostel with a young woman from China. We had a terribly hard time explaining the idea of "cousin." Once we did, she explained that she was unfamiliar with the concept because her family (and apparently all the families she knew well) had only had single children for generations. I…

The young woman in your anecdote is an extreme outlier. First, her family and all families she knew well only had a single child for generations; if that’s the case for most people, the population would shrink rapidly, so obviously most families aren’t like that. Secondly, to be unfamiliar with the concept at all, she had to be unfamiliar with some household names from cornerstones of Chinese literature, taught in gr…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#185

Post by atq2119 »

mulmen wrote: post #139
klausa wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda! If you have a contact with that specific option set, it'd display as >younger cousin (mother's sibling's daughter or father's sister's daughter).

That’s surprising. I’d expect it to be “cousin” in English. Why would it be the more specific string? Is it just too difficult to do the i18n?

While you have a point, imagine the string appearing in a combo box or other list of relationship kinds. It would be very confusing to have multiple options that are all just "cousin".

To solve both that use case and the ones you have in mind, the API could perhaps be extended with a language-aware "normalization" procedure that maps relationship labels in a way that loses information but produces a more canonical label for that language. And you'd use that API only in those cases where it makes sense.

But then that would lead to a contact being displayed slightly differently in different settings, which may in itself be confusing to users.

At some point you just have to give up and call it good enough.

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#186

Post by bananatype »

jes5199 wrote: post #120
mercutio2 wrote: post #105

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…

are there multiple languages that have this exact relationship concept? because if it’s in a single language or family of languages, the idea that it can be translates into something generic seems questionable

In the Tagalog (Filipino) language, we have the following words which are of Hokkien import:

* parent-in-law - biyenan * son- or daughter-in-law - manugang

* brother-in-law - bayaw * sister-in-law - hipag

* the spouse of your brother- or sister-in-law - bilas

We also have the following words for siblings which are influenced by Hokkien:

(male first, then female) * elder sibling - kuya / ate (or aya / achi) * second eldest - diko / ditse * third eldest - sanso or sangko / sanse * youngest sibling (male or female) - bunso (or siobe)

I've also heard my grandaunts call my grandfather "siaho" (the eldest sister's husband) but I don't know what's the equivalent word for the eldest brother's wife.

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#187

Post by hervature »

mendigou wrote: post #165
hervature wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this is serious. I don't even know which language you're using but it is literally no different than mom's mom and dad's mom other than a space.

The point of the conversation is how people express these relationships in their day-to-day so they can be encoded in software. Would your grandparents' contact be saved on your phone as "Mom's mom" or as "grandma"? Probably the second, which is indistinguishable from "grandma" as "Dad's mom". In Norwegian, people would naturally call these "mormor" and "farmor" and they would expect that relationship to be correctly…

I am fully aware of what the topic is about. I'm just pointing out that the English language and native English speakers definitely use the concept of mom's mom and dad's mom without the needing "official" words like "momdad" and "dadmom" because the person I responded to said

> I am fairly sure English doesn't have (or at least does not use) separate everyday words for farmor/farfar.

They then said you would need "academic" language to describe mom's mom and dad's mom. That's why I said I could not tell if they were serious. Anyway, I think you would be surprised if you asked English speakers what they call their grandparents. I personally used memere and grandma to distinguish between my mom's mom and my dad's mom. The point I'm making is that not having specific words for these relationships does not make English speakers unaware of the difference.

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#188

Post by dfcowell »

jes5199 wrote: post #120
mercutio2 wrote: post #105

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…

are there multiple languages that have this exact relationship concept? because if it’s in a single language or family of languages, the idea that it can be translates into something generic seems questionable

Vietnamese also has it.

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#189

Post by prmoustache »

conductr wrote: post #135
mynegation wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you squint hard enough - yes. I do not know if it is Sapir-Whorf, but if I grew up using completely different words for sisters of my spouse, brothers of my spouse, husband of my sister, and wife of my brother, they do not look that similar to me.

But you understand they’re all referring to aunts and uncles of your children

The children have nothing to do with that for a start. They may not even exist.

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#190

Post by prmoustache »

petesergeant wrote: post #181
SilasX wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don’t forget the kink that, in Breaking Bad, Walt uses the term to refer to his spouse’s sibling’s husband.

I absolutely do refer to my spouse's sibling's husband as my brother-in-law, I don't think that's that unusual?

Well it can be. To me, my spouse's sibling's husband is just...my spouse's sibling's husband and nothing else. Some vague acquaintance I may vaguely see once every decade when someone die or get married in my spouse family.

It really depends how tight knit families are and how families are spread accross the world. I have to take a plane and cross some borders in order to visit my parents or my sibling's and same applies to my partner so there is that.

Post reply on HN