Sunday, November 9, 2008

Overwhelming degrees of kinship

The combination of strong family ties with a distinct sense of social hierarchy in China resulted in a myriad of different words for relatives in Mandarin Chinese. Trying to overcome the confusion of the countless various titles for aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces poses a major challenge for people from the west. This file here lists degrees of kinship (English—Chinese, Chinese—English) in alphabetical order. [9 pages; file last edited/updated on Sun, Nov. 9, 2008]

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