Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

Teoh wrote:
>And if you think this is bad... just wait till I tell you about
>translating "aunt" and "uncle"... *snicker* there are distinct words for
>your father's siblings (and distinctions between younger/older,
>male/female), your mother's siblings (and distinctions between
>younger/older and male/female), AND your in-laws, plus separate terms with
>the same distinctions for each uncle/aunt on your in-laws' side, etc.,
>etc., ad infinitum. And this only covers relatives of the same
>generation... it gets a LOT worse with grandparents, nephews, nieces, ...
While Swedish isn't that bad, we do have distinct words for "father's
brother" and "mother's brother" and for "father's sister" and "mother's
sister". We used to have different words for female and male cousins, but
now these words (to the extent they're used at all) mean respectively
children of your parent's cousins' and grandchildren of your grandparents
cousins. For cousin we now use "kusin" (from the French).

                                         Andreas

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