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That’s a specific relationship with its own dedicated name in Chinese
by phyrex 5y ago
That’s a specific relationship with its own dedicated name in Chinese
- twic 5y agoWhat is this relationship? And what does "younger" mean here - younger than the contact?
- ronyclau 5y agoI'm guessing this is 表妹. In English, your male siblings are "brothers", and female siblings are "sisters", regardless of age. In Chinese, we differentiate between younger and elder siblings. Your elder brother is 哥哥, younger brother is 弟弟; elder sister is 姐姐/姊姊, and younger sister is 妹妹.
- masklinn 5y agoAlso don’t chinese family relationships distinguish beetween maternal and paternal-side relationships? E.g. a cousin on your father’s side is called / qualified / described differently than a cousin on your mother’s side?
- dapeng 5y agocorrect, father side is prefixed with 堂 mother side is prefixed with 表 堂哥 male cousin older than me 堂弟 male cousin younger than me 堂姐 female cousin older than me 堂妹 female cousin younger than me 表哥 male cousin older than me 表弟 male cousin younger than me 表姐 female cousin older than me 表妹 female cousin younger than me
- wangweij 5y agoAs I understand, only children of father's brothers can be prefixed with 堂, because they have the same last name and are traditionally considered to be in the same house. All others, including children of father's sisters, are all prefixed with 表.
- jhgb 5y agoIt would seem reasonable to me to use the latinized form of the Chinese word as part of the identifier instead of the awful descriptive identifier.
- dqpb 5y agoI would like you to figure out what that would be and post it here.
- zzzbra 5y agothink about what you’ve just said
- carnitine 5y agoIf you’re suggesting the current identifier is already latinised, it’s not, it’s translated.
- jhgb 5y agoI've basically just said that, e.g., instead of the identifier EmployeeTheNumberThatIdentifiesATupleInARelation, you should really be using the identifier EmployeePrimaryKey. That is, you usually refer to things using the name of the respective concept, not by describing what the thing's concept is every time you're trying to refer to the thing. It's called "coining a term". Or, in programming, abstraction (as per SICP, that is giving a name to some compound construct so as not to be forced to repeat it endlessly).
- robjan 5y agoIt's not specific to one Chinese Language or even just Chinese.
- jhgb 5y agoSurely it has a more generic name, then.
- wongarsu 5y agoI honestly don't know if I would prefer CNLabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter or CNLabelContactRelationBiǎoMèi (is unicode even allowed?). And I probably butchered that romanization and upset half the internet in the process.
- karatinversion 5y agoI've seen this explained before; from memory, it's a type of cousin, with specifiers: Chinese has distinct words for relatives of the same generation (siblings, cousins) who are older or younger than oneself. Like "big brother" and "little brother" in English, but you always include the big/little part. "Younger" specifies that this cousin is younger than the person whose contacts book this is. Female - Chinese has separate words for male and female cousins The rest of the word salad specifies a relationship that is approximated by answering the question "is her (maiden) surname the same as my (maiden) surname?" in the negative — either she is a daugher of one of my mother's siblings, and doesn't share my surname because I have my father's surname, or she is my father's sister's daugher, and thus has her father's surname, which again is not the same as mine.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- m_st 5y agoIsn't that "Kleincousin" in German? "Younger" could certainly match the "Klein" part. That would be the daughter of your cousins, so there's surely a male variant too.
- enzo1982 5y agoI'm German and I never heard the term "Kleincousin". According to Wikipedia [0] it seems to be used regionally to refer to 2nd degree cousins (which I would call "Großcousin"). Anyway, "Kleincousin" and "Großcousin" don't imply the age of the cousin, but a degree of relationship (with regional differences to what is actually meant). To refer to a younger cousin, I would just say "jüngerer Cousin". "kleiner Cousin" may be possible too (like "kleiner Bruder" for a younger Brother), but it sounds a bit like childs talk and it may not be immediately clear to everyone what is meant. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verwandtschaftsbeziehung#Cousins_und_Cousinen_n._Grades https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verwandtschaftsbeziehung#Cousi...
- karmasimida 5y ago表妹(mother's side) or 堂妹(father's side)
- gadders 5y agoFor other items that native English speakers may not know - I believe in some Indian languages there are different nouns for your uncle and aunt, depending if they are on your father's or mother's side.
- MagnumOpus 5y agoMany other languages do. I think all Chinese languages do, but you don't need to go that far. Even German/Dutch/Frisian/Swiss do have it, although nowadays few use them and many people don't even know. (Father's siblings are Onkel/Tante cognate to uncle/auntie, but Mother's siblings are Oheim/Ohm/Öhi if male and Muhme/Muoike if female.)
- m_eiman 5y agoI like the Swedish variant of this. It's basically describing the relationsship in terms of closes family ties, so maternal grandfather is "morfar" ie "mother father". Same principle applies to a bunch of relationships: farmor - father's mother farfar - father's father faster - father's sister (abbreviated from "far syster") moster - mother's sistem (abbreviated) farbror - father's brother I like to extend the basic set of these to older generations, so instead of "my mormor's father" it'd be "mormorfar". Very practical!
- Terry_Roll 5y agoIts interesting how different languages have evolved, so Inuit have many words for snow because this highlights area's of concern or importance for them. So the fact these language differentiations exist in Indian and Chinese language, highlights an area of concern or importance for them. In Iceland, surnames use the fathers firstname and sson for son and dotir for daughter, to highlight the relationship in an otherwise small community. Whether that cultural habit is to reduce the incidence of inbreeding I've yet to find out, but it makes me wonder. History and culture gives away a lot of metadata.
- tonguez 5y ago“ Whether that cultural habit is to reduce the incidence of inbreeding I've yet to find out, but it makes me wonder.” That’s racist. “The only way these people are going to be able to stop fucking their cousins as if they come up with a naming system that makes it extremely clear who is related to who.” There are probably other explanations other than being inbred as to why they do this. Like how some people go by Junior or Senior. Do you think that’s to prevent inbreeding also?
- ddoolin 5y agoYes, I believe these relationships also have their own names in Korean, if not lifted directly from Chinese most likely.