My Cha-Cha Sister
nglish and most other European languages tend to have fewer words
for family members — aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, and so on
— compared to many Asian languages, which use a much more precise
terminology to name relatives.
For example, in English we use the word “uncle” to describe all of our
parents’ brothers and any men who married into the family. But in India,
where such differences can be very important, the Hindi language has five
separate words that can be translated as “uncle”:
चाचा
“cha-cha” — father’s younger brother
ताऊ
“ta-oo” — father’s older brother
मामा
“ma-ma” — mother’s brother, regardless of age
फूफा
"poo-pa" — father's sister's husband
मौसा
“mao-sa” — mother’s sister’s husband
Likewise, there are four different ways to say “cousin”: You say “cha-cha
brother” or “cha-cha sister” (“cha-cha” being “uncle”, as above) for the
cousins from your father’s side, while those on your mother’s side are
“ma-ma brother” and “ma-ma sister” (with “ma-ma” again meaning
“uncle”).
Hindi has equally detailed words for the various in-laws, and interestingly
the name for your wife’s brother — “sala” (साला) — is also used as an insult,
sometimes jokingly. This is apparently because calling a man “brother-in-
law” implies you slept with his sister.
hinese, meanwhile, is even more detailed in its family-member names
than Hindi. Where Hindi has just one word meaning “sister”, Chinese
specifies between older sister (姐姐) and younger sister (妹妹), and likewise
for brothers.
And in large families, relations often get a number in front of their name
to show their age-ranking, such as “(number) three little sister” (三妹) for
the youngest of your three younger sisters. The eldest usually get “big” (大)
in front his or her name — for example, “big elder sister” (大姐). And
confusingly, people in northern China sometimes refer to the youngest in
a group as “old” (老), so that if you had three maternal uncles, they would
be called, from oldest to youngest:
大舅
big maternal uncle
二舅
(number) two maternal uncle
老舅
old maternal uncle (but actually the youngest of the three)
The reason for calling the youngest uncle “old” is unclear. It might be
something along the lines of the “old” in “good old Uncle John”, which
doesn’t really refer to age.
The literal meanings of Chinese names for family members can be pretty
elaborate, and in some cases they use actual royal titles. Your father’s
older brother is your “bwo-bwo” (伯伯), from “bwo” (伯), the Chinese
equivalent to “earl” or “count”. Your husband’s father is your “gong-gong”
(公公), from “gong” (公), which means “lord”.
Chinese has eight words for “cousin”, depending on the gender, whether
they are older than you, and whether or not they have the same last name
as you.
And where Hindi insults with “brother-in-law”, Mandarin speakers in
northern China use “grandson” as roughly the equivalent of “bastard” or
“jerk” in English. The word is pronounced “swoon-dzuh” and is written:
孙子
This also happens to be the name of a famous Chinese philosopher and
military adviser, best known for his “Art of War”. (Usually in English, his
name is spelled “Sun Tzu”.) Given some of the stories about Sun Tzu,
maybe this coincidence with the word for “jerk” is appropriate — it’s said
he once had two concubines put to death for not leading a military drill
correctly.
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