Re: Kinship terminology

On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> I've been thinking about what Phaleran's kinship terminology should
> be like, and I've kinda been wondering how y'all's languages handle
> this --  any ideas? Is there any particular system to outline how the
> kinship terminology is made up?
Seems to depend on culture.  I still don't have the English 2nd and 3rd
cousin things worked out, though I do have 2nd cousins.

Korean kinship terms are very asymmetrical.  There about twice as many
kinship terms for relatives on the ego's father's side as on the ego's
mother's side.  There's a good website on this:

http://catcode.com/kintro/index.htm

I just bought a book on the Korean alphabet--a collection of essays by
linguists focusing on Korean--and it's fascinating; the Pacific languages
book was fun, but this is about a language I know.  I don't even
recognize the phonetic terminology used to describe half the phonemes--at
least, they're not mentioned in Crystal's Encyclopedia or Fromkin that I
recall.  Coronal??  Tense/aspirated obstruents, plus just plain vanilla
obstrunets?  Meep?  On the bright side, now I know what the IPA's are for
Korean sounds I can say perfectly well (okay, okay, I have an American
accent, but so what) and since I know what the *sounds* are I can
probably generalize.  :-)

YHL