Hacker News Reader

Comment by klausa | Hacker News Reader

You, and many people here keep assuming that this is a feature that is unique to Chinese language and/or kinship system.

It's the main one that English speakers are probably exposed to; but even in this thread there are mentions of other languages and cultures where this or similar relationships have specific terms and more generic ones like "cousin" simply don't exist.

Grouping them all under "Chinese system" is... let's say culturally insensitive.

_That_ is a reason enough to not use the term from any specific language as a constant name; let enough to not expose that in the UI to users.

View on HN

I am Asian but not Chinese, I know what you wanted to say. The problem is though, East Asian kinship systems are pretty similar in the aspect that it recognizes most differences in gender, age, generation and lineage, but there are considerable variations as well. For example I think this particular term has no Korean counterpart. So this term is indeed unique, though some terms would be also shared among those systems. I would say that the label should be replicated for each system in that case.

> Grouping them all under "Chinese system" is... let's say culturally insensitive.

It’s probably the vast majority of people using it though? Simply by virtue of being such a massive country.

The people actually using the constant are translators.

What about India? They alone would reduce China from the 'vast' majority[0].

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...

Is this concept also used in any of the major Indian languages?

Yes in Hindi you have different nouns and adjectives for uncles, aunts and cousins depending on the relation path:

E.g. Mother's sister = Mausi

Mother's sister's child = Mauseri/mausera

Father's younger brother's child = chacheri/chachera

And so on.

Although some of these are more obscure and I'm not sure how commonly they are used these days.

I see.

Notably, mapping the entire path isn't congruent with the concept in the topic, which encompasses both "Father's sister's daughter, younger than me" and "Mother's sibling's daughter, younger than me" in one phrase.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com