Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

 --- "H. S. Teoh" wrote:
> > That's another weirdity of learning English in
> school - they tell you that
> > there simply is no direct translation of the
> Swedish word _syskon_
> > "sibling", and that if you desperately need to
> translate ie you have to use
> > "brother or sister" (unless you've got a feminist
> teacher - she would tell
> > you to write "sisiter or brother"!:-)).
> Well, native Chinese speakers (all, or most
> "dialects") have a problem
> translating the English "brother" and "sister" --
> because there are TWO
> words for brother and sister -- one for older, one
> for younger. This is
> one of the things that stood out the most to me when
> learning English as a
> kid. Although I *liked* the generality of the
> English term, it gets really
> annoying that when I translated them to my native
> tongue I have to say
> "younger-brother or older-brother", or just pick one
> arbitrarily and hope
> I didn't guess wrong :-) (and be quite embarrassed
> if it turned out to be
> wrong.)
>
> There are, of course, compound terms that refer to
> both younger and older
> siblings, but those sound rather technical and are
> generally avoided in
> casual conversations.
>
> 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, ...
>
> (And, unlike what they tell you, most Chinese can't
> figure out all those
> terms either... they tend to only know those terms
> that actually
> correspond with somebody that exists in their family
> -- which is a
> consequence of having the proper term seared into
> their memory through
> strict repetitious reminders at every single family
> reunion -- and they
> usually have a hard time remembering exactly what
> relationship the term
> denotes. :-P)
>
>
> T
Answer: Right, most Chinese people don't remember all
the relative terms, but they can use them after first
time you tell them, withou extra rememberance, for all
the one hundred words were combined by about thirty
common characters.
Su Cheng Zhong

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