[Multilingual Monday] Family Ties

[aadroma]

I'm amazed I haven't covered this topic yet! Today we talk about terms for family members, and how such terms are used differently in English and make distinctions that would take further elaboration in English as well ...

JAPANESE: We'll start with Japanese, where there is a differentiation between older and younger siblings -- an older brother

Comments

[theotherqpc]

Mandarin's my first language, and i *still* can't keep all of the extended family names right! cousins, in particular, confuse me terribly.

[aadroma]

Yeah, it does seem ... erm ... a bit complicated ...

[gorkabear]

Mmm, remarkably, I know a single example of the opposite: a language that uses less variants than ours.

It's Italian: they use the same word for grandson and nephew: nipote. I don't know any other language that uses the same word.

[jenndolari]

I have always wanted to learn Basque. Any good ideas where I can start?

[aadroma]

There is a great book called Colloquial Basque that makes for a great start into the language -- I highly recommend it!

You can also, after that, try Lang-8, and make posts in Basque. There are a few Basque speakers who will correct your posts.

[jenndolari]

By the way, what's your EMail. I have a question/request for/of you....

[aadroma]

aadroma at gee mail dot cahm!

[sskroeder]

Although I'm pretty vanilla when it comes to languages (I only know Danish, English, German, Dutch - and few words in French) I find your language postings to be very interesting...

I was particularly surprised by the systematic construction of these extended family names in hindi...

So if -a ending is masculine and baabaa is father, is biibii then mother ?

[bluebear2]

Only?

Thank you for the kind words!

[aadroma]

"Pretty vanilla" -- :: laugh :: I can't say I've ever compared languages to hankies ^_- That list is nothing to sneeze at -- "only," indeed! Dutch and German are great to know (hot men in both countries) and as for Danish? Well I'd kind of expect that. Admittedly the "vowels that seemingly randomly drop out in pronunciation or get an unexpected pronunciation" do throw me in the Danish language. you should hear me butcher Danish-language music. :: laugh ::

As for Hindi: बाप, baapa is the general writing for "father" and doesn't follow the a/i pattern ("mother" is maataa, माता), but if it DID the word would be baapi, I guess. :: laugh ::. A few others don't follow this pattern -- obvious loan words like मां, maam, "mom", and also "brother" (भाई, bhaaii) and "sister", बहिन, bahina).

The Philippines

[tisoi]

The terms for older brother "kuya" and older sister "ate" are derived from Hokkien Chinese. They can be used to refer to cousins who are older than you. Among Filipino Americans, I've seen it used to refer to older friends.

In other Philippine languages you will find variations of the Spanish word "hermano" - manong, manoy, mano, & mang and the feminine variants manang, manay, & mana. They are used like kuya/ate. My Tagalog-speaking grandmother refers to her elder sister as "ate" but she refers to her Bikol-speaking cousin as "manay."

In Ilokano, they have an additional word used to refer to younger siblings and cousins - "ading." I think Tagalogs should adopt that word!

There is a non-specific (no reference to gender or age) for siblings - Tagalog, for example, has kapatid. As well as pinsan for cousin.

Also, Chinese Filipinos take kuya and ate a step further. Second brother is "diko" and third is "sangko" and "siko" for fourth" Feminine forms ditse, sanse, and sitse.