How to call your relations
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In the last few years I've noticed a number of apps that can be used to figure out the proper terms to refer to your relations in Chinese. Of course, this is a problem in all languages. For example, who is your "second cousin twice removed"? Some people care about these things and are good at figuring them out. For Chinese, these are particularly important matters, but younger generations are becoming increasingly ill adept at using the correct, precise terms of address. Hence the felt need for (digital) tools to assist one in determining the proper address for your relatives.
For example, what do I call "wǒ de māmā de dìdì de nǚ'ér 我的媽媽的弟弟的女兒" (my mother's younger brother's daughter")? Answer: she is my "jiù biǎojiě/jiù biǎomèi 舅表姐／舅表妹", depending on whether she is older or younger than me.
I sense a certain kind of angst about not being confident concerning how to address one's relatives. There are several reasons for this. First is that the nuclear family has broken up and extended families no longer live together or in close proximity, so members no longer have the frequent opportunity to talk to each other in person. Second, in past times, it was unthinkable for family members to address each other by their given / personal name; they were required by stern custom to call each other by their relational term, e.g., "shěnshen 嬸嬸 " ("father's brother's wife"), instead of "Xiùzhī 秀芝".
If you want to see how complicated terms of address for Chinese relationships (qīnqī guānxì 親戚關係) can be, take a gander at this chart. It takes into account the description of the kinship in question, the formal title, the popular term used to designate the relationship, variants and alternatives, and the proper term for referring to oneself when addressing the person in question (e.g., avoid "wǒ 我" ["I"], instead say "sūn / sūnnǚ 孫/孫女" ["grandson/granddaughter"]).
The complexity of Chinese kinship terms is multiplied countless times according to topolects and sociolects.
Here's a kinship "calculator" for Android. For a demo, click "Trailer".
Selected readings
- "Know your relatives in Chinese" (6/1/23)
- "Double cousins?" (4/13/06)
[Thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto]
~flow said,
January 30, 2025 @ 10:07 pm
These hypertrophic kinship term systems are one thing in language that can, as far as I'm concerned, just crash and burn and turn to ashes for good, never looking back. As an aside, one has to wonder how real the full-fledged systems are and to what degree they're the result of a native language 'construction game', not unlike the English collective nouns for animals where a certain reasonable core system of terms was intentionally blown up to ridiculous proportions and was apparently never meant to be part of ordinary people's vocabulary but had to be taught explicitly, thus also marking class distinctions. I also reject overblown kinship term systems on the ground that they monopolize family ties—and, among these, especially the 'blood lines'—as the one way to have interpersonal relationships at the expense of every other way a human being can enter into meaningful relationships with other individuals.