Re: Kinship Terms

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 03:30:44PM -0400, Cristina Escalante wrote:
>    Link: File-List
>
>    No kinship terms here.
>
>    However: Most of the kinship terms I've seen are mother, brother, sister,
>    grandparent etc. I'm curious, where is the half sibling, demibrother,
>    second wife, ex wife, third cousin, adopted son, foster sister, same-sex
>    partner?
Well, where are those terms in English? :)

Meþkaeki actually goes the other way - it has only five basic words that
indicate family relationships, in two categories.  The first category is
for direct ancestors/descendants, no matter how remote: your "sil" is
your parent, grandparent, or other ancestor, while your "forg" is your
child, grandchild, or other descendant.

The second category contains three words used for less direct
relationships: patç, aþpri, and þov.  Which one is used
depends on the generational difference: if two people are of the same
generation, they are patçbau; otherwise, the member of the older generation
is the aþpri of the member of the younger generation, and the member of the
younger generation is the þov of the member of the older generation.

Thus, two people who are patçbau may be siblings, first cousins, second
cousins, etc.  If they are aþpri and þpov, then they may be
aunt(uncle)/niece(nephew), cousins with removal, etc.

All of these words may be quantified with numbers to give more
precision, much as in English we stick some number of "greats" in front,
or use an ordinal and a repeat count ("third cousin twice removed").

-Marcos