4 ms·

What I find interesting here is that this is an english translation of a chinese lineage - a phrase like "uncle" or "second cousin". We have nothing remotely l

What I find interesting here is that this is an english translation of a chinese lineage - a phrase like "uncle" or "second cousin". We have nothing remotely like this - because we don't have those concepts embedded in our society. The fact that Mandarin has these terms but English not only does not have but that we find so ... outrageous it gets on HN, is deeply indicative - family matters so much more that it's affecting the language - and that in turn forces kids to learn the words and thus keep their lineage in mind. As a shallow westerner who hardly talks to anyone outside his nuclear family I may be less "restricted" by my family but I am missing quite a lot. (No I am not trying to make some sweeping comments about culture, or government administrations or "the modern world". )

deleted 5y ago
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hanselot 5y ago
Why have generic mechanisms for referring to things right? Much easier to make up a new word for every single different thing? This just makes mandarin look like an incredibly mal-optimized language to me, but whatever, to each his own. Besides, if you go full-puritan on this you end up with esperanto, and I can't speak that either.
kongin 5y ago
I can't help but think we'd be better off using tree navigation operators and gender as types. Li(ft), do(wn), si(deways), like lisp's car, cdr, caaadr, etc.. And adding m(ale) and fe(male) at the end of the word as types. E.g. paternal uncle would be lim-sim. Maternal grandmother's son's daughter: life-life-dom-dofe. Utterly pointless and ridiculous but so much more sensible than having a dozen different words which contain less information than what we care about.
- euroderf 5y ago
  Maybe Loglan does it in such a way ?
  - kongin 5y ago
    I have no idea. Does Loglan allow for defining new DLSs?
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Doesn't work in case of incest. Just thinking of edge cases here...
  - dmurray 5y ago
    Why not? Where someone has more than one relationship to you, you can either mention both or the closer one, as we do in English. "This is my son" (or son and nephew). "Cletus is Hank's father" (or father and grandfather). The suggested tree navigation operators don't rely on the structure being strictly a tree.
    - kongin 5y ago
      That works if we assume no time travel so we get acyclic graphs. Time travelling incest is beyond the scope of this dsl however.
      - bregma 5y ago
        Time travel or mountain folk. Banjos can be a funny thing and you never know what'll happen when you strum the ol' hammer claw.
    - jan_Inkepa 5y ago
      A relative once said to me "The reason I get on with my aunt so well is that she's also my cousin". Islander life, islander values...
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    That isn't even an edge case; some countries have double-digit percentage of consanguineous marriage.
- bradrn 5y ago
  Similar notation is standard in linguistics (and probably other fields too): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship_terminology#Abbreviations_for_genealogical_relationships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship_terminology#Abbreviati.... e.g. ‘Maternal grandmother's son's daughter’ would be MMSD.
cm2187 5y ago
Perhaps I am missing something but how it the label here different than “cousin”?
- mrweasel 5y ago
  It's a specific cousin. I have four cousins, three female and one male (Danish actually have different words for female and male cousins), this label can refer to only ONE of my four cousins.
  - vitus 5y ago
    Right. To be more specific, this particular term conveys three things about the cousin: - relative age (this cousin is younger than you) - gender (this cousin is female) - and... an archaic notion of whether this cousin is related to you via a female blood relative (either your mother's sibling, or your father's sister).
    - mrweasel 5y ago
      > an archaic notion Maybe it's just part of the language now, and it will sound weird if you don't make that distinction? English has similar issues, in that it has two words: girlfriend and boyfriend, which is a bit old fashion, especially when you come from a language that doesn't make that distinction. On the other hand, what would you replace those two words with?
      - vitus 5y ago
        I don't disagree here. I'm commenting that the terminology dates back to familial structures and housing arrangements that largely no longer exist. Hence, archaic (since it's a historical artifact). As alluded to by other commenters: in China, women would be "married out" such that they would live with their husbands' families. As a result, the notion of "younger sister from outside" versus "younger sister down the hall" arose. That distinction doesn't exist if the newlywed couple doesn't move in with either of their parents. ... On the note of your question: English also has husband/wife, widow/widower, fiancé/fiancée (okay those are technically French loanwords). In the husband/wife scenario, we might use "spouse". And I still find "partner" a bit odd when it's used to refer to heterosexual couples, even if it's perfectly applicable. Is the more specialized terminology entirely irrelevant in either case (English or Chinese)? No, it conveys more information. But there are certainly situations where it's just not applicable (e.g. if one or both entities identify as nonbinary). (and as an aside, it's a distinction that makes the language harder to learn with all of its nuances -- my father has no sisters, so I grew up assuming that it was just "which parent's side is the cousin on?")
jasode 5y ago
>family matters so much more that it's affecting the language I think it's more accurate to say "family _hierarchy_ matters so much more" in Chinese language. Different cultures emphasize different things. An example in the opposite direction: Western families would have more verbal exchanges of "I love you mom." and "I love you too." -- compared to traditional Asian families. However, you really can't extrapolate from that language usage to say "family matters more" in America.
skissane 5y ago
> The fact that Mandarin has these terms but English not only does not have but that we find so ... outrageous it gets on HN, is deeply indicative I think the thing that makes it "outrageous" is the fact that its name is such a mouthful. If they'd simply called it CNLabelContactRelationBiaoMei (as some other comments have suggested) no one be so "outraged". Most people seem to be okay with the idea that other cultures can have concepts which are difficult to express in English without using a lot of words. But using all those words, as opposed to just borrowing the foreign term, is an odd choice.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  "outrageous" is an inappropriate word. I mean the large number of words conjoined (very surprising to see in English, perhaps less in say German). It's not meant as a perjorative. I guess I need to read my thesaurus more often

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hanselot 5y ago

Why have generic mechanisms for referring to things right? Much easier to make up a new word for every single different thing? This just makes mandarin look like an incredibly mal-optimized language to me, but whatever, to each his own. Besides, if you go full-puritan on this you end up with esperanto, and I can't speak that either.

kongin 5y ago

I can't help but think we'd be better off using tree navigation operators and gender as types. Li(ft), do(wn), si(deways), like lisp's car, cdr, caaadr, etc.. And adding m(ale) and fe(male) at the end of the word as types. E.g. paternal uncle would be lim-sim. Maternal grandmother's son's daughter: life-life-dom-dofe. Utterly pointless and ridiculous but so much more sensible than having a dozen different words which contain less information than what we care about.

euroderf 5y ago
Maybe Loglan does it in such a way ?
- kongin 5y ago
  I have no idea. Does Loglan allow for defining new DLSs?
raxxorrax 5y ago
Doesn't work in case of incest. Just thinking of edge cases here...
- dmurray 5y ago
  Why not? Where someone has more than one relationship to you, you can either mention both or the closer one, as we do in English. "This is my son" (or son and nephew). "Cletus is Hank's father" (or father and grandfather). The suggested tree navigation operators don't rely on the structure being strictly a tree.
  - kongin 5y ago
    That works if we assume no time travel so we get acyclic graphs. Time travelling incest is beyond the scope of this dsl however.
    - bregma 5y ago
      Time travel or mountain folk. Banjos can be a funny thing and you never know what'll happen when you strum the ol' hammer claw.
  - jan_Inkepa 5y ago
    A relative once said to me "The reason I get on with my aunt so well is that she's also my cousin". Islander life, islander values...
- _dain_ 5y ago
  That isn't even an edge case; some countries have double-digit percentage of consanguineous marriage.
bradrn 5y ago
Similar notation is standard in linguistics (and probably other fields too): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship_terminology#Abbreviations_for_genealogical_relationships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship_terminology#Abbreviati.... e.g. ‘Maternal grandmother's son's daughter’ would be MMSD.

cm2187 5y ago

Perhaps I am missing something but how it the label here different than “cousin”?

mrweasel 5y ago
It's a specific cousin. I have four cousins, three female and one male (Danish actually have different words for female and male cousins), this label can refer to only ONE of my four cousins.
- vitus 5y ago
  Right. To be more specific, this particular term conveys three things about the cousin: - relative age (this cousin is younger than you) - gender (this cousin is female) - and... an archaic notion of whether this cousin is related to you via a female blood relative (either your mother's sibling, or your father's sister).
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    > an archaic notion Maybe it's just part of the language now, and it will sound weird if you don't make that distinction? English has similar issues, in that it has two words: girlfriend and boyfriend, which is a bit old fashion, especially when you come from a language that doesn't make that distinction. On the other hand, what would you replace those two words with?
    - vitus 5y ago
      I don't disagree here. I'm commenting that the terminology dates back to familial structures and housing arrangements that largely no longer exist. Hence, archaic (since it's a historical artifact). As alluded to by other commenters: in China, women would be "married out" such that they would live with their husbands' families. As a result, the notion of "younger sister from outside" versus "younger sister down the hall" arose. That distinction doesn't exist if the newlywed couple doesn't move in with either of their parents. ... On the note of your question: English also has husband/wife, widow/widower, fiancé/fiancée (okay those are technically French loanwords). In the husband/wife scenario, we might use "spouse". And I still find "partner" a bit odd when it's used to refer to heterosexual couples, even if it's perfectly applicable. Is the more specialized terminology entirely irrelevant in either case (English or Chinese)? No, it conveys more information. But there are certainly situations where it's just not applicable (e.g. if one or both entities identify as nonbinary). (and as an aside, it's a distinction that makes the language harder to learn with all of its nuances -- my father has no sisters, so I grew up assuming that it was just "which parent's side is the cousin on?")

jasode 5y ago

>family matters so much more that it's affecting the language I think it's more accurate to say "family _hierarchy_ matters so much more" in Chinese language. Different cultures emphasize different things. An example in the opposite direction: Western families would have more verbal exchanges of "I love you mom." and "I love you too." -- compared to traditional Asian families. However, you really can't extrapolate from that language usage to say "family matters more" in America.

skissane 5y ago

> The fact that Mandarin has these terms but English not only does not have but that we find so ... outrageous it gets on HN, is deeply indicative I think the thing that makes it "outrageous" is the fact that its name is such a mouthful. If they'd simply called it CNLabelContactRelationBiaoMei (as some other comments have suggested) no one be so "outraged". Most people seem to be okay with the idea that other cultures can have concepts which are difficult to express in English without using a lot of words. But using all those words, as opposed to just borrowing the foreign term, is an odd choice.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
"outrageous" is an inappropriate word. I mean the large number of words conjoined (very surprising to see in English, perhaps less in say German). It's not meant as a perjorative. I guess I need to read my thesaurus more often