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LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

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Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

uncle/aunt is wildcard relation and means little. Actually in Russian for example it is the same word you use to describe a random person whom you may not even have any relation to

There's a lot of languages where aunt/uncle is just a polite word that children can use to refer to older adults who are not their parents (in some languages there is an upper age limit, where it becomes polite to refer to these as grandma/grandpa).

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#222
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apologies for not using a better source than wikipedia, but I could believe that the anecdotal woman was not such an outlier, when you take into account that whole "one child policy" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

That only started in 1979, with limited enforcement throughout, and gp’s talking about families with only one child for generations (probably >=3 in the context but at least 2) circa 2000 which is only one generation removed, so that’s only a small factor. Especially considering China’s population doubled from 1949 to 1979.

I also discussed the indirect/cultural factor where one should learn about this. There are two complementary factors here: if the young woman was rural there was practically no way she never encountered a family with multiple children; if she was urban it was more likely she was educated and thus should at least learn about it from school and/or through literature.

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Swedish our words for many relationships follow a very simple system of composing relationships. A few examples: Mor = mother Far = father Bror = brother Morfar = mother's father Farfar = father's father Farmor = father's mother Farfar = father's father Farbror = father's brother Morbror = mother's brother ...

We use the same in Danish, but also uses: Faster = fathers sister Moster = mothers sister You can also use tante (aunt) about these A farbror or morbror is often called an onkel (uncle).

That's still in Swedish, covered by the ...

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#224
post #214
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the machine is going to do with this label though?

If you have the relationship setup in your contact, you can tell Siri to call your wife/sister/younger cousin etc. Siri will also set up the relationship automatically if you tell her to “call my wife”, and don’t have that relationship set - she will ask who your wife is, update the contact, and make the call. It’s pretty neat if your family names are hard for (English) Siri to understand, because you can just “hey s…

What if I want to call my boss? Or my hairdresser? Or my hairdresser's uncle? If Siri can do speech recognition, can't it compare the result to a generic text field?

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#225
Interesting! Reminds me in Japanese how you can (almost) tell what a sibling is composed of just by looking at the kanji characters. These are ALL read as "kyoudai":

兄弟:Elder brother, younger brother

姉弟:Elder sister, younger brother

兄妹:Elder brother, younger sister

The 4th remaining case is 姉妹, and is read "shimai".

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#226
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urdu has even more discretization. Transliterated into latin characters * Mother's brother = mamoo * Mother's sister = khala * Father's older brother = Taaya * Father's younger brother = Chacho * Father's sister = Phupo Each of these's spouse also has a corresponding word. For example, Father's sister's husband will be Phupa. Then, their children are identified with a suffix. Mother's brother's son = Mamoo zaad bhai…

Adding further to the confusion in Urdu speaking areas when the cousin/mothers' relatives becomes your wife?

not just Urdu:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Global_p...

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#227
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The constant embeds everything that an English-speaking localizer needs to explain the relationship in a different language. That’s why something like the [proposal] (just use the Chinese name for this relationship) would not be an improvement. I don't exactly agree. Note that this constant embeds two terms, exactly because this particular kinship term does not distinguish them. In the other word this constant can…

You, and many people here keep assuming that this is a feature that is unique to Chinese language and/or kinship system. It's the main one that English speakers are probably exposed to; but even in this thread there are mentions of other languages and cultures where this or similar relationships have specific terms and more generic ones like "cousin" simply don't exist. Grouping them all under "Chinese system" is...…

> Grouping them all under "Chinese system" is... let's say culturally insensitive.

It’s probably the vast majority of people using it though? Simply by virtue of being such a massive country.

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#228

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.

https://xkcd.com/2040

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#229

Interesting! Reminds me in Japanese how you can (almost) tell what a sibling is composed of just by looking at the kanji characters. These are ALL read as "kyoudai": 兄弟:Elder brother, younger brother 姉弟:Elder sister, younger brother 兄妹:Elder brother, younger sister The 4th remaining case is 姉妹, and is read "shimai".

Same with oji (uncle)/oba (aunt):

叔父: uncle (younger than one's parent)

伯父: uncle (older than one's parent)

叔母: aunt (younger than one's parent)

伯母: aunt (older than one's parent)

Re: LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

#230
post #194

For someone on Android - why do they have these constants at all? If people need to add metadata to remember who their contacts are, why not free text field?

Android has exactly the same way of specifying relationships (I think it comes from vCard spec?); though their list of named constants is much smaller:

https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/...

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