Burmese kinship

Last updated

The Burmese kinship system is a fairly complex system used to define family in the Burmese language. [1] In the Burmese kinship system: [2]

Contents

History

Many of the kinship terms used in Burmese today are extant or derived from Old Burmese. [3] These include the terms used to reference siblings and in-laws. [3]

Grades of kinship

The Burmese kinship system identifies and recognizes six generations of direct ancestors, excluding the ego: [4]

  1. Be (ဘဲ) - great-grandfather's great-grandfather (6 generations removed)
  2. Bin (ဘင်) - great-grandfather's grandfather (5 generations removed)
  3. Bi (ဘီ) - great-grandfather's father (4 generations removed)
  4. Bay (ဘေး) - great-grandfather (3 generations removed)
  5. Pho (ဘိုး) - grandfather (2 generations removed)
  6. Phay (ဖေ) - father (1 generation removed)

The Burmese kinship system identifies seven generations of direct descendants, excluding the ego: [4]

  1. Tha (သား) - (1 generation removed)
  2. Myi (မြေး) - (2 generations removed)
  3. Myit (မြစ်) - (3 generations removed)
  4. Ti (တီ) - (4 generations removed)
  5. Tut (တွတ်) or Hmyaw (မျှော့) - (5 generations removed)
  6. Kyut (ကျွတ်) - (6 generations removed)
  7. Hset (ဆက်) - (7 generations removed)

Extended family and terminology

Kinship terms differ depending on the degree of formality, courtesy or intimacy. Also, there are regional differences in the terms used.

Common suffixes

Burmese also possesses kin numeratives (in the form of suffixes):

Relationships

The Burmese kinship system also recognizes various relationships between family members that are not found in English, including: [4]

Members of the nuclear family

RelationTermForm of addressEnglish equivalentNotes
Fatherဖခင်
pha khin
အဖေa phay
ဖေဖေphay phay
Father
Motherမိခင်
mi khin
အမေa may
မေမေmay may
Mother
Elder brother
(male ego)
နောင်
naung
Brother
Elder brother
(female ego)
ကို
ko
Brother
Younger brother
(male ego)
ညီ
nyi
Brother
Younger brother
(female ego)
မောင်
maung
Brother
Older sister
ma
Sister
Younger sister
(male ego)
နှမ
hna ma
Sister
Younger sister
(female ego)
ညီမ
nyi ma
Sister
Husbandလင်
lin
HusbandInformal: ယောက်ျား (yaukkya). Formal: ခင်ပွန်း (khinbun).
Wifeမယား
maya
WifeInformal: မိန်းမ (meinma). Formal: ဇနီး (zani).
Sonသား
tha
Son
Daughterသမီး
thami
Daughter

Members of the extended family

Immediate lineage
RelationTermForm of addressEnglish equivalentNotes
Parent's fatherဖိုး
pho
Grandfather
Parent's motherဖွား
phwa
Grandmother
Father's elder brotherဘကြီး
ba gyi
Uncle
Father's younger brotherဘလေး
ba lay
UncleThe youngest uncle may be called ဘထွေး (ba dway).
Father's elder sisterအရီးကြီး
ayi gyi
Aunt
Father's younger sisterအရီးလေး
ayi lay
AuntThe youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay).
Mother's elder brotherဦးကြီး
u gyi
Uncleဝရီး (wayi) is now obsolete.
Mother's younger brotherဦးလေး
u lay
Uncle
Mother's elder sisterဒေါ်ကြီး
daw gyi
AuntAlso ကြီးတော် (kyidaw).
Mother's younger sisterဒေါ်လေး
daw lay
AuntThe youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay).
First cousinမောင်နှမ တဝမ်းကွဲ
maung hnama ta wun gwe
First cousinLit. "siblings one womb removed"
Nephews and nieces
RelationTermForm of addressEnglish equivalentNotes
Sibling's sonတူ
tu
Nephew
Sibling's daughterတူမ
tuma
Niece
In-laws
RelationTermForm of addressEnglish equivalentNotes
Brother's wife
(female ego)
Husband's sister
ယောက်မ
yaungma
sister-in-law
Elder brother's wife
(male ego)
Wife's elder sister
မရီး
mayi
sister-in-law
Younger brother's wife
(male ego)
Wife's younger sister
ခယ်မ
khema
sister-in-law
Sister's husband
Husband's younger brother
Wife's brother
ယောက်ဖ
yaukpha
brother-in-law
Elder sister's husband
(female ego)
Husband's elder brother
ခဲအို
khe-oh
brother-in-law
Younger sister's husband
(female ego)
Husband's younger brother
မတ်
mat
brother-in-law
Son's wifeချွေးမ
chwayma
daughter-in-law
Daughter's husbandသမက်
thamet
son-in-law
Spouse's fatherယောက္ခထီး
yaukkahti
father-in-law
Spouse's motherယောက္ခမ
yaukkhama
mother-in-law

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aunt</span> Female relative who is sibling of ones parent

An aunt is a woman who is a sibling of a parent or married to a sibling of a parent. Aunts who are related by birth are second-degree relatives. Alternate terms include auntie or aunty. Children in other cultures and families may refer to the cousins of their parents as aunt or uncle due to the age and generation gap. The word comes from Latin: amita via Old French ante and is a family relationship within an extended or immediate family.

The Serbo-Croatian standard languages have one of the more elaborate kinship (srodstvo) systems among European languages. Terminology may differ from place to place. Most words are common to other Slavic languages, though some derive from Turkish. The standardized languages may recognize slightly different pronunciations or dialectical forms; all terms are considered standard in all language standards, unless otherwise marked: [S] (Serbian), [C] (Croatian), [B] (Bosnian) and [M] (Montenegrin) below.

Iroquois kinship is a kinship system named after the Haudenosaunee people, also known as the Iroquois, whose kinship system was the first one described to use this particular type of system. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Iroquois system is one of the six major kinship systems.

Eskimo kinship is a category of kinship used to define family organization in anthropology. Identified by Lewis H. Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Eskimo system was one of six major kinship systems. The system of English-language kinship terms falls into the Eskimo type.

Hawaiian kinship, also referred to as the generational system, is a kinship terminology system used to define family within languages. Identified by Lewis H. Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Hawaiian system is one of the six major kinship systems.

Omaha kinship is the system of terms and relationships used to define family in Omaha tribal culture. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Omaha system is one of the six major kinship systems which he identified internationally.

Sudanese kinship, also referred to as the descriptive system, is a kinship system used to define family. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Sudanese system is one of the six major kinship systems.

A cousin is a relative that is the child of a parent's sibling; this is more specifically referred to as a first cousin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dameli language</span> Indo-Aryan language spoken in Pakistan

Dameli (دَميلي), also Damia, Damɛ̃ḍī, Dāmia bāṣa or Gidoj, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic subgroup spoken by approximately 5,000 people in the Domel Town, in the Chitral District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chinese kinship</span> System of family relationships in China

The Chinese kinship system is among the most complicated of all the world's kinship systems. It maintains a specific designation for almost every member's kin based on their generation, lineage, relative age, and gender. The traditional system was agnatic, based on patriarchal power, patrilocal residence, and descent through the male line. Although there has been much change in China over the last century, especially after 1949, there has also been substantial continuity.

In general, a Vietnamese pronoun can serve as a noun phrase. In Vietnamese, a pronoun usually connotes a degree of family relationship or kinship. In polite speech, the aspect of kinship terminology is used when referring to oneself, the audience, or a third party. These terms may vary by region. Many are derived from Chinese loanwords but have acquired the additional grammatical function of being pronouns.

Kinship terminology is the system used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology; for example, some languages distinguish between consanguine and affinal uncles, whereas others have only one word to refer to both a father and his brothers. Kinship terminologies include the terms of address used in different languages or communities for different relatives and the terms of reference used to identify the relationship of these relatives to ego or to each other.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Family</span> Group of related people

Family is a group of people related either by consanguinity or affinity. It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as members mature and learn to participate in the community. Historically, most human societies use family as the primary purpose of attachment, nurturance, and socialization.

Philippine kinship uses the generational system in kinship terminology to define family. It is one of the most simple classificatory systems of kinship. One's genetic relationship or bloodline is often overridden by the desire to show proper respect that is due in the Philippine culture to age and the nature of the relationship, which are considered more important.

In the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a niece or nephew is a child of an individual's sibling or sibling-in-law. A niece is female and a nephew is male, and they would call their parents' siblings aunt or uncle. The gender-neutral term nibling has been used in place of the common terms, especially in specialist literature.

Irish kinship is a system of kinship terminology which shows a bifurcate collateral pattern. This system is used by a minority of people living in the Gaeltacht regions of Ireland. Irish kinship terminology varies from English kinship as it focuses on gender and generation, with less emphasis on differentiating lineal vs. collateral.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uncle</span> Male relative who is sibling of ones parent

An uncle is usually defined as a male relative who is a sibling of a parent or married to a sibling of a parent, as well as the parent of the cousins. Uncles who are related by birth are second-degree relatives. The female counterpart of an uncle is an aunt, and the reciprocal relationship is that of a nephew or niece. The word comes from Latin: avunculus, the diminutive of avus (grandfather), and is a family relationship within an extended or immediate family.

Aboriginal Australian kinship comprises the systems of Aboriginal customary law governing social interaction relating to kinship in traditional Aboriginal cultures. It is an integral part of the culture of every Aboriginal group across Australia, and particularly important with regard to marriages between Aboriginal people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hindustani kinship terms</span> Glossary of Hindustani words and phrases to describe familial relationships

The kinship terms of Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) differ from the English system in certain respects. In the Hindustani system, kin terms are based on gender, and the difference between some terms is the degree of respect. Moreover, "In Hindi and Urdu kinship terms there is clear distinction between the blood relations and affinal relations."

Sesotho – the language of the Basotho ethnic group of South Africa and Lesotho – has a complex system of kinship terms which may be classified to fall under the Iroquois kinship pattern. The complex terminology rules are necessitated in part by the traditional promotion of certain forms of cousin marriage among the Bantu peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. Most of the terms used have common reconstructed Proto-Bantu roots.

References

  1. မာလေး (1977). မြန်မာ့ဆွေမျိုးစပ် ဝေါဟာရများ (PDF) (in Burmese). စာပေဗိမာန်. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-12-15. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  2. Burling, Robbins (October 1965). "Burmese Kinship Terminology". American Anthropologist. 67 (5): 106–117. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00740. JSTOR   668758.
  3. 1 2 Tun, Than (1958). "Social life in Burma, AD 1044-1287" (PDF).
  4. 1 2 3 Sein Tu (September 1997). "Myanma Family Roles and Social Relationships". Myanmar Perspectives. Archived from the original on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Bradley, David (1989). "Uncles and Aunts: Burmese Kinship and Gender" (PDF). South-east Asian Linguisitics: Essays in Honour of Eugénie J.A. Henderson: 147–162. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2013-10-19.
  6. Myanmar-English Dictionary. Myanmar Language Commission. 1993. ISBN   978-1-881265-47-4.