(no subject)

[superborb]

I was looking at the taiwanese terms for gay/lesbian family members that was making the rounds, and was thinking about how heterogeneous family terms are in China (and obviously the diaspora). More than anything else, I feel like family terms preserve regional differences in topolect. (Especially confusing when the same term means different relatives in different topolects.) I know that for 3 of my 4 grandparents, I use varying degrees of topolect terms instead of standard Mandarin, even though I am generally unable to speak those topolects.

Anyway, how this translates into fic is beyond my abilities, I just wanted to ramble a bit about how fluid the relative terms are compared to how they're often presented. Like, no, I don't have a 外婆wai4po2, I have an a2bu3.

Actually, I think maternal grandmother is one with the most variance across China, with also 姥姥 lao3lao, 阿嬷 a1mo2, 婆婆 po2po, 细爹 xi4die1, 家家 jia1jia1. There was a big kerfluffle a few years ago where some textbooks in Shanghai used laolao instead, and like (I say this with love), Shanghainese people got Very Upset at this northern nonsense. (Waipo is apparently more southern.)

Comments

[issenllo]

No kidding. I had real cognition dissonance the first time I heard 媳妇 being referred to as someone's wife. In my back of the woods, it means daughter-in-law. Definitely some wild thoughts of wtf!incesty warnings going off in my mind at that point. And 爱人for spouse/partner (though it has the advantage of being gender-neutral) because I'd always been led to assume it meant lover, often in the context of something happening outside of marriage.

Last year, I found an app that names the generational title, e.g. what do you call your father's sister's grandchild, etc. But it disappeared when I changed phones, boo.

[superborb]

LOL yeah, that's a fun difference. My dictionary specifically calls out 爱人 as spouse (PRC); lover (non-PRC), which is interesting.

There was another app making the rounds, but I broke it within a few tries, so it wasn't very good...