Re: Lack of vocabulary in English?

ranjit_mathews_at_yahoo.com
Date: 03/02/05 

Date: 1 Mar 2005 19:08:39 -0800

Neeraj Mathur wrote:
> "Stewart Gordon" <smjg_1998@yahoo.com> wrote ...
> > I had a friend who came from Sri Lanka. She sometimes jokingly
referred
> > to her brother as "my fourth cousin" (her parents are third
cousins). And
> > I found out that Tamil has separate words for "maternal
grandmother",
> > "maternal grandfather", "paternal grandmother" and "paternal
> > grandfather" - presumably a number of other languages are the same.
 But I
> > don't remember what was said (if anything) about the existence or
not of
> > terms encompassing two or four of the above.
>
> All Indian languages make this distinction - there are very few terms
that
> apply equally to both parents' sides of the family. In Hindi at least
there
> are no terms that include two or four of your grandparents (except
for
> dvandva compounds).

In Malayalam, the default word for grandmother seems to follow lineage.
In a patrilineal caste, <valiyamma> means father's mother and in a
matrilineal caste, it means mother's mother.

> > And people must have some job translating stuff to Maori, where
they have
> > different words for siblings depending on your gender and the
direction of
> > age difference.
> >
> > http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=3DED1D66.A30@ihug.co.nz
> >
> > But at least this distinction must help people remember the age
order of
> > twins.

I think twins would be considered of equal age where I'm from, but none
of my hundreds of 1st, 2nd & 3rd cousins are twins and I haven't heard
of any in my parents' and grandparents' generation either.

> In Hindi as well, you have different terms depending on the age of
your
> sibling relative to yourself. Or to be more specific, there are
general
> words for 'brother' and 'sister' and words that specifically mean
'older
> brother' and 'older sister', which carry an element of respect.

In Malayalam:
<penngaLa> = a man's sister
<anngaLa> = a woman's brother
<anujan> = a man's younger brother
<anujatti> a woman's younger sister
<jESTan> = a man's elder brother
<jESTatti> = a woman's elder sister
They can also refer to first cousins living in the same household; a
prefix of <sondam> makes it unambiguously one's own sibling.
They're also used for relatives by marriage; eg.,<jESTatti> can also be
a man's elder brother's wife (a term of respect even if she's younger
than oneself)
Then, there are the seldom used terms:
<sahOdaran> = brother
<sahOdari> = sister
<sahOdarar> = siblings (no singular form)

Relevant Pages

  • Strange deaths Re: your daily wtf
    ... Both O.C. Siblings Died Of Natural Causes SANTA ANA -- The ... Orange County coroner's office says a sister and brother found dead in ... Daniel Savage's body. ... brother had a stroke, and this caused the sister, who had an underlying ...
    (alt.true-crime)
  • Re: Gender identification code
    ... Geobird wrote: ... I have a brother and sister who (unlike the rest of my siblings) are ...
    (comp.programming)
  • Re: OT: odd rellies
    ... one family of her ancestors had five ... Of the five siblings, two married two siblings from another ... Brother and sister married brother and sister of ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Whatever Happened to German brother who maried hs own sister ????????????
    ... Whatever Happened to German brother who maried hs own sister ???????????? ... Clare Murphy looks at the history of the incest taboo and how it is changing. ... But there might have been years between the siblings given the high rate of ...
    (uk.religion.islam)
  • Re: nth cousins x times removed... Help!
    ... me in the 1840's - my Great Great Great Grandmother and their Great Grandfather were sister and brother - what relation does that make us to each other!!?? ...
    (soc.genealogy.britain)