Teacher Discussion Forums

Translating oriental languages always causes lots of problems when it comes to relatives. My Chen and Tsui Chinese/English dictionary has this:

I'm a relative on her parents' side - I'm her aunt.

Do you think a native speaker would say that?

Do you personally ever use terms like 2nd cousin once removed? I always forget what they mean exactly, and I assume most other people would not know either. Even "great aunt" is something I think I have never said, except in jest.

"I'm a relative on her parents' side" sounds quite strange. If her parents' side is one side, what is the other? "I'm a relative on her father's side," or "I'm a relative on her mother's side," however, sounds okay.

I have used "great aunt" occasionally, although I always called my great aunt "aunt" anyway.

I don't remember what a "second cousin once removed" is either.

Surely the point of saying "on her mother's/father's side" is to give a bit more detail of how you are related to the person in question. "I'm a relative on her parents' side" tells us no more than "I'm a relative" since by definition you are a relative on one side or the other. "On her parents' side" therefore adds nothing and is redundant.

Presumably they are saying they are ascendents and not descendents.

In Anglo-Saxon cultures the extended family has been weakened by socio-economic disruption. Other cultures have not suffered from this and thus have more precise terms for kinship.

I think they mean that the aunt is a blood relative, or married to one, rather than an in-law.

woodcutter wrote:I think they mean that the aunt is a blood relative, or married to one, rather than an in-law.

I think you lost me. Do you mean that an "in-law aunt" would be my mother's brother's wife's brother? Do those count? .

or married to one, rather than an in-law

If you are married to one, isn't that what makes you an in-law or am I being very dense?

I think they are describing the (for example) wife of the bride's mother's brother, who is not referred to in English as an in-law.

I don't know what to make of Lori's suggestion, which seems to make a male aunt.

I think that a Korean could view themselves as having a new aunt through marriage, as we would not. (Well, they ought to get a new one, since the girls are scrubbed out of their parents' family records).

woodcutter wrote:
I don't know what to make of Lori's suggestion, which seems to make a male aunt.

lol Why so it does.

Apart from the term "in law", it is possible to talk about "blood relatives", and "relatives by marriage"