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Transcript Episode 27: Words for family relationships: Kinship terms

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 27: Words for family relationships: Kinship terms. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 27 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: And I’m Gretchen McCulloch, and today, we’re getting enthusiastic about words for family members – kinship terms! But first, we’re looking forward to 2019. It’s almost here. We’re very excited to continue with the regular show. We have some exciting plans – like video episodes.

Lauren: We’ve had a really exciting 2018. We’ve done lots of really cool stuff. You’ve been along for the ride, and we’re really looking forward to continuing with regular episodes and other exciting things in 2019.

Gretchen: And we just hit our goal to make a special video episode about the linguistics of gesture, which is super exciting.

Lauren: It was also really great to have Gretchen in Australia when we hit the goal for the gesture videos. That happened while she was out on her trip to do the live shows. We had celebratory ice cream. It was very exciting.

Gretchen: Yes, so that was fantastic. We’re looking forward to the next goal, which is going to be a special video episode interviewing a deaf linguist about the linguistics of sign language. Stay tuned for which sign language and which linguist we’re going to be interviewing for that once we hit that goal.

Lauren: Our latest bonus Patreon episode is a Q&A that we did while we were in the same geographic location, which you can find on patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: Yes, as well as 20 previous bonus episodes, which is almost an entire double Lingthusiasm. You should definitely check that out if you haven’t already.

Lauren: We also both have other exciting 2019 adventures. I am having a baby, which we mentioned a couple of episodes ago. That will take up a fair amount of my 2019, I feel.

Gretchen: I feel like babies are pretty busy. But the episodes will continue as scheduled. I have a book coming out in July 2019, so you’ll also hear –

Lauren: A book baby!

Gretchen: A book baby! I wonder which one is gonna be cuter. We probably shouldn’t have that competition.

Lauren: They’re cute in their own ways.

Gretchen: One of them will eventually learn to talk back, and it won’t be the book. If you wanna see what the cover looks like, and for pre-order information, you can check out the link in the show notes or on my website as well.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, Lauren, here is an important linguistic question – what are you gonna have your baby call you? Are you gonna be a “Mama,” a “Mum,” a “Mummy?”

Lauren: I haven’t thought about this, which means I guess that I’m just gonna go with my socio-cultural norms, so I’m probably gonna be “mum.”

Gretchen: Okay, that’s very standard, yeah. It seems legit.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: I mean, I have some friends who called their parents – or had their kids call them by their first names.

Lauren: Oh, yeah, that always seems really weird to me. If I call my parents by their first name, it’s because we’re having some kind of very silly conversation.

Gretchen: I think I only do it if I’m at a grocery store, or a park, or something, and I need to catch their attention, and saying “Mom” or “Dad” isn’t working, and so I’m like, “I guess I should say their name to get them to turn around.” Maybe that’s a thing you could do.

Lauren: I love how it’s such a conscious decision for you.

Gretchen: Definitely not part of my norm, but it is part of some people’s norms.

Lauren: Yeah, I know people whose kids call them by their first name just because they find the idea of being “Mum” or “Dad” really weird.

Gretchen: I also know people who find the idea of “Mum” or “Dad” being weird. They go by something like “Mama,” or “Papa” or, you know, things like –

Lauren: Or they have some kind of cultural – I have people whose families have Italian heritage, so they’re “Mama” or “Papa.” I knew someone at school who had a “Grandmother,” but her friend at school had a “Nonna.” And she was like, “Well, that word sounds cool.” And so she just started calling her very Anglo-Australian grandmother “Nonna” even though there’s no family history of Italian naming in their family.

Gretchen: That’s very cute.

Lauren: It was really cute. So sometimes people will deviate – every family has its own idiosyncrasies. Sometimes, they pop up in the kinship terminology that people use.

Gretchen: I think, especially for grandparents, those seem to be a little bit more idiosyncratic, whether cultural or there’re just more names for grandparents. Like, “Mama,” and “Papa,” and “Da-Da” seem to be very common across different languages. Whereas, whether you say “Nana,” or “Nonna,” or “Opa,” or “Oma,” or these kinds of things, tend to be a bit more different.

Lauren: We have both a “Grandfather” and a “Pop” in terms of my grandparents.

Gretchen: Yeah, I had both “Grandad” and “Papa,” then, for the grandmothers, both “Mimi” and “GG,” which are idiosyncratic names.

Lauren: “Mimi” and “GG?”

Gretchen: Yeah, my –

Lauren: Where did they come from?

Gretchen: Well, so “GG” comes from the fact that that grandmother was named “Gretchen,” who I was named after. So “GG” stands for “Grandma Gretchen.” And her grandmother –

Lauren: Oh, that’s so great. Like, lovely and meta.

Gretchen: Yeah, and her grandmother was also named “Gretchen,” who she was named after, so she had a “GG.” Sometimes she used to say, “Well, my GG blah blah blah…” So I’ve always known in a weird way that if I had grandkids, I already have a grandma name.

Lauren: Wow, that’s a lot of presupposition there, Gretchen.

Gretchen: Because, clearly, I have to continue the tradition of “GG” if I have kids – if I have grandkids.

Lauren: It’ll be a nice story.

Gretchen: Yeah, and “Mimi” – I, apparently, at around the age of one or two, gave this name to my grandmother because I was the oldest grandkid on this side. That’s what I apparently started calling her, and it stuck.

Lauren: Cool. You created language change within your family.

Gretchen: I was pre-linguist!

Lauren: You’re a linguist innovator.

Gretchen: Yeah, but my grandmother Mimi used to joke that “Mimi” and “GG” sounded like two little French poodles or something like this.

Lauren: They do. It’s very cute.

Gretchen: I think, especially in English, kids often end up creating or using different terms from different cultures because it’s really useful in a family context to be able to distinguish between maternal and paternal grandparents. And yet, this is not something that English has built-in words to do. Whereas, other languages do.

Lauren: Yeah, and when you start looking at – we have all these different things that we call different members of our family – so different kinship terms – and we start looking at how different parts of the family get segmented up and what different languages and cultures pay attention to. You start to realise that some languages lump together a whole bunch of people that we might separate out into different terms. English is very good at lumping together groups of people that have distinct kinship terms in other languages and cultures. It’s always really fun to learn those different systems and start thinking about how your family relate to each other in different ways.

Gretchen: Yeah, I haven’t really – most of the languages that I’ve worked with have been European, so I haven’t done a whole lot with languages that have other kinship terms. But there’re some different forms in Syuba, right?

Lauren: Yeah, when I’m in Nepal, when people ask about my family, I suddenly have to start thinking about – for example, aunts and uncles. It varies depending upon whether they’re your uncles on your dad’s side or your uncles on your mother’s side. In Syuba, your “Ao” is your father’s brother, and your “Ashang” is your mother’s brother. So your uncles on each side have different names. And then, in terms of your aunts, there’s actually a whole bunch of different terms. The aunts on your mother’s side all get called “Ama,” which is the same as the word for mother –

Gretchen: Oh, interesting.

Lauren: – and so you distinguish them by saying “Ama Chombo” or “Ama Chame,” which means your “big mother,” your aunts that are older than your mother, and your “Ama Chame” are your aunts on your mother’s side that are younger than your mother.

Gretchen: Oh, so that’s also distinguished – the older versus younger side.

Lauren: Yeah, and it’s not that people don’t know – just to make it clear. It’s not that people don’t know that their mother is different from their aunt. It’s just that that’s how the system – I know that my uncles on my dad’s side are different to the uncles on my mom’s side. I just don’t think about it that much day-to-day.

Gretchen: But something I find really interesting is that English doesn’t distinguish between uncle-by-marriage or aunt-by-marriage versus uncle and aunt that are actually your blood relatives.

Lauren: No.

Gretchen: Personally, I have a distinction, I guess, between uncles and aunts that were already in the family when I was a kid and the ones that have subsequently married my uncles or aunts after I got older because the ones that were in the family when I was a kid, I call them all “Uncle” and “Aunt.” And that’s fine. The ones that showed up when I was already a teenager, towards adulthood, I’m like – I just call them by their names because I didn’t have that – they were first introduced to me, I guess, as, “This is the boyfriend or girlfriend or person that so-and-so is dating.” And so, I spent a couple years knowing them just by their name for that reason. And then, when they got married, I didn’t switch over to calling them “Uncle” or “Aunt” even though, technically, they are. But somehow, that doesn’t work for me in the same way as the ones that I’ve known as part of the family ever since I was a kid.

Lauren: It’s like, for you, the terminology involves some kind of entrenchment within the family system.

Gretchen: Yeah, or like, “Did I know you as a child,” or something like that seems to be the factor, which is definitely not a factor that is officially encoded into any kinship system I’ve ever encountered but seems to be encoded in my personal kinship system.

Lauren: Which always makes these things more interesting.

Gretchen: Yeah, there’s the official kinship systems and then there’s the personal, idiosyncratic kinship systems. But there are languages that have different terms for relatives by marriage as well.

Lauren: Yeah, so your aunts on your mother’s side are your “Ama,” but if it’s your father’s brother’s wife it’s “Tsitsi.” Whereas, your aunts who are your father’s relatives – so younger sisters – are “Ani.”

Gretchen: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Lauren: And so, you know who was married into the family as opposed to who is a sister of your father.

Gretchen: And there’s more terms on the aunt side than on the uncle side?

Lauren: Because aunts can marry into families or marry out of families. In this culture, it’s the women who move house when they get married. So your uncles are always around whether they’re your father’s brothers or your mother’s brothers. Whereas, women aren’t bringing uncles into the house, necessarily. They’re less important to you.

Gretchen: Your uncles-in-law – you’re gonna have less contact with them, so they don’t have a distinct term for them.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: I mean, you could say “uncles-in-law” or “aunts-in-law.” I don’t know why we don’t.

Lauren: I find the whole “in-law” terminology in English very confusing. If I were gonna fix English –

Gretchen: You would fix the in-laws?

Lauren: The kinship system does need a bit of a makeover, and the in-lawing is very confusing because – I mean, to me, it’s confusing because so many people in my family have long-term partners who aren’t married. I like to refer to them as “out-laws.”

Gretchen: I think a lot of people use the out-law terminology as a jocular version of in-laws.

Lauren: But it does kind of upset my grandparents.

Gretchen: See, my family says “out-laws” all the time.

Lauren: Whereas, it amuses me that – say, my brother’s partner technically has the same terminology as my partner’s sibling’s partner.

Gretchen: Yeah, that double layer. Maybe there should be “in-law-in-law.” Like, “brother in-law-in-law” should be the one that’s two steps from you?

Lauren: Yeah, I guess it depends on how close you feel to people as well. I generally don’t refer to my “sister-in-law.” I just refer to her by name.

Gretchen: Yeah, I mean, that’s fair, too.

Lauren: It’s a bit like the aunts-and-uncles thing. It’s too hard to assimilate you into my pre-existing kinship structure.

Gretchen: Well, and that’s the thing because, especially, if your siblings are having partners – assuming you’re fairly close in age to your siblings – you’re probably encountering those partners – you’ve already gone through your childhood acquisition of who your family is. And then, suddenly, your sibling’s bringing in somebody new. And it’s like – at what point do you switch over to that? Is it when they start living together? Is it when – do they have to have a formal wedding? Where do these things change? Maybe that’s part of the idiosyncratic system.

Lauren: We’ve distinguished some cultures have terms that vary depending whether it’s on your mother or father’s side, terms that differ depending on if someone’s older or younger. And, again, Syuba distinguishes siblings that are older or younger. “Older sister” is “Adzi,” but “younger sister” is “Nomo.” “Older brother” is “Ata,” and “younger brother” is “No.” When people ask me about my family, they ask, “Do you have siblings?” And I can say, “Yes, I am ‘Older Sister,’” and it – immediately, I have to say I have a younger brother and a younger sister. I immediately situate myself in my family structure.

Gretchen: If you say, “Older Sister,” that means you’re the oldest because that’s what your siblings call you?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: If people say, “Do you have brothers or sisters,” and I say, “I have two siblings,” I think that immediately implies, “Okay, they’re different genders,” because if I had two sisters, I could just say I had two sisters.

Lauren: It would be – for an English speaker, you are giving an insufficient quantity of information by using “sibling.”

Gretchen: Yeah, I was giving a less-informative answer than I could. My sister and I both say, “Oh, yes, I have two siblings,” but my brother says, “I have two sisters.” And this always surprises me because I think of myself as being one of “siblings.” I don’t think of myself as being one of “sisters” because I have “siblings.” I don’t have “sisters.” But, of course, you know, at some point, it breaks down.

Lauren: Which brings us to some cultures focus on defining kin terms by gender. We do have a lot of terms in English. Your parents get distinguished by gender, your aunts and uncles, your grandparents. But not everyone does. “Cousins” is a good example of that. “Siblings” is a good example of that.

Gretchen: Yeah, “cousins” is especially interesting because English has this elaborate cousin system. And yet, for a lot of people, it’s fairly obscure. They’re aware of the terminology involved, but they don’t actually know how to apply it.

Lauren: I’m in contact with a fairly extended range of my family, and we all have just agreed at some point to just refer to each other as “cousins.” If someone’s really curious about why I have a 60-year-old cousin in Canada, I will talk them through the family structure. I can calculate out second-cousinses and once-removeds, but we just end up using “cousins” because it’s so much easier. We really aren’t very good at calculating it.

Gretchen: I mean, I have this very distinct memory for “cousins,” which I don’t have for other terms, of when I was about nine or ten. I had been seeing a bunch of one corner of the family tree, sitting down and calculating how all of the once-removeds and how all of the first-and-second-cousins-thing worked. When I did that, I memorised which of the people were which and which of the people weren’t. I call them all “cousins.” I’m not like, “Hi, Second Cousin Bill,” because I don’t think anyone really does that. But I can also be like, “Oh, I have a cousin in Australia.” He’s actually my first cousin once-removed because he’s my mom’s cousin. There’s a removal of generations.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: I’ve had to explain this system to adult, native English-speakers, who, in principle, you’d expect to know the kinship terms of our own language, but the “cousins” system –

Lauren: And like, learning them at nine or ten is very late in language acquisition. A lot of kin terms we learn really early off. They’re some of our first words.

Gretchen: Especially for family terms, yeah. It’s one thing to be learning the extended numbers system. Like, maybe you don’t know what a “quadrillion” is at age nine or ten, or you don’t know some of the more technical vocabulary, or business jargon, or these corners of the lexicon. But kinship terms are very basic. They’re often learned very early.

This brings me to one of my favourite cross-linguistic studies, which is the one that finds that “Mama” and “Papa” are words that children use to address their mothers and fathers – are some of the very, very first words across a whole bunch of languages that are completely unrelated.

Lauren: Yeah, this is one of those it-seemed-so-obvious-when-I-first-learnt-it facts about language.

Gretchen: Yeah, about 60 years ago, the American anthropologist G.P. Murdock did this survey of over 500 cultural groups around the world. He found that about half of societies use some sort of combination of /mə/, /mɛɪ/, /na/, /nɛɪ/, /noʊ/ to mean “mother.” And another half, not necessarily the exact same societies, uses some combination of /pə/, /poʊ/, /ta/, or /toʊ/ to mean “father.” So /mama/, /mɛɪmɛɪ/, /nana/, /nɛɪnɛɪ/, /papa/, /tata/ – these kinds of things. He’s like, “This is a weird coincidence. Why?”

Lauren: Linguists get really caught up in historical linguistics, trying to use the relationship between lots of current languages to trace back to an older language. Some people thought maybe this relates to some fact of history. But Roman Jakobson had a completely different theory, and one that I find really compelling, which is that when you have an infant, and they’re learning to use their mouth, they’re gonna start with the sounds that are the easiest to make. The very easiest sounds to make are exactly those sounds that you mentioned in Murdock’s paper.

Gretchen: Especially, you know, /a/ is very easy. You can scream it. Many other sounds aren’t very scream-able. Babies can scream it. And /ma/, /pa/ – the sounds that involve your lips – are very also easy to make – very straightforward for the baby to learn to make. It doesn’t involve as much control as using the tongue or further back in the throat. It’s just a straightforward open-and-close thing. You’re not trying to do bits of vibration, or bits of frication, or other types of more complicated things. And maybe the baby can see what their parents are doing – you can see when someone else is using their lips. He figured it’s kind of a property of babies, but it’s also a property of parents thinking, “I’m so important in my child’s life. Clearly, this baby’s saying my name.”

Lauren: It’s a self-reinforcing fact across generations where parents are like, “Oh” – take what is essentially a child babbling and learning how to use their mouth as – “They’re talking to me! They’re saying my name!”

Gretchen: “They’re saying my name!” Which I think is also beautifully human of us in a very different sort of way.

Lauren: Which is why even though we say the proper English names are “Mother” and “Father,” if you ask people what their children’s first words were, you’ll often get them to say, “Oh, she said ‘Mama,’” even though that’s not what we think of as the normal English term. We accept very low standards from children in those regards.

Gretchen: It’s very charming. It’s also interesting that “Mama” and “Papa” are a lot more common as first names than “Amam” and “Apap,” which are made out of the same sounds but putting a consonant and then a vowel is much –

Lauren: Easier.

Gretchen: Is much easier. And some languages don’t let you begin words with vowels. But every language will let you begin a word with a consonant and end it with a vowel. Or some languages won’t let you end a word with a consonant. But consonant-vowel is a good basic syllable in every language. /ma/ is a better word than /am/, and /pa /is a better word than /ap/ for babies to learn and for languages to produce. You don’t get “Apap” and “Amam.” You get “Mama” and “Papa.”

Lauren: I’m gonna go from talking about some of the most primary and parentally instinctual vocabulary about kinship to sharing some really cool stuff in Australian languages, because one thing I find really interesting is when you have a culture that, over time, manages to create these incredibly elaborate and complex kinship systems – I think, in some ways, our inability to process our word for “cousins” is potentially a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing, right? We don’t use these terms very much because we don’t really talk about or track our extended families very often in our culture.

Gretchen: Right, but in cultures where people are less likely to move to cities, and are more likely to have larger families, and continue living in the same villages with or areas with a lot of extended family around, it’s useful to distinguish between all these different kinds of relationships. Especially to prevent people from having kids with people who are too closely related to them, which is, you know, useful for the continuation of the human species and shows up in different cultures a lot.

Lauren: When you have cultures that have been together, living in close-knit, complex societies for generations and generations, you can get some really cool kinship stuff. And Australian languages seem particularly well-disposed to this. One thing that’s really nifty is people calculate “harmonic generations.” This is where – to use your family as an example of what a harmonic generation is – in some ways, your lineage of GG’s is an example of harmonic generations, where grandparent and grandchildren are treated with the same kin term or treated as being part of a cohort together.

Gretchen: Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, I guess it’s kind of the case in English in the sense that they both get the prefix “grand.” Whereas, you don’t have that for parent/child, mother/father, daughter/son. They don’t have the prefix. Whereas, grandchild/grandparent have a symmetrical prefix.

Lauren: So in the Waanyi language, the term for “grandparent” can actually be used reciprocally to refer to a grandchild as well. There’s a really nice paper on that that I’ll link to in the show notes. Another really interesting thing is all of the relationships we’ve been talking about so far have been about my relationship with another person or your relationship with another person. And a lot of kin terms, you start with the individual in the centre of the diagram, and you’re like – “my aunt” is about my relationship with this person. Or “my grandparent,” or “my grandchild,” is about my specific relationship with a specific individual. And then – my grandparent is not your grandparent because we are not related to each other.

Gretchen: That is true.

Lauren: Whereas, tri-relational kin terms are terms that encode three different relationships. There are reasons why these come into being, but I’ll give you an example of one first.

Gretchen: Okay, I can’t even visualise this right now.

Lauren: Well, the good thing is there is a visualisation. There’ll be a link to this article by Joe Blythe. In Murrinhpatha, there is a term that is used by a male speaker when talking to their son or daughter about the son or daughter’s grandmother on the other side of the family.

Gretchen: Okay, okay.

Lauren: It’s not saying – it’s not a word for “my mother-in-law.” And it’s not a word for “your grandmother.” It’s a word that specifically means –

Gretchen: “Your opposite-side grandmother.”

Lauren: “Your opposite-side grandmother.”

Gretchen: “Your grandmother who is not my mother.”

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: And is it a prefix that’s used for any of the relatives on that side?

Lauren: No, there are entirely different forms depending on different relationships – for your son or daughter’s maternal grandparent on the other side of the family. And the reason that tri-relational kin terms like this one evolve is because there are taboos within the culture on men being able to speak to or about their mother-in-law.

Gretchen: Okay.

Lauren: That explains that one. But there are other tri-relational kin terms that don’t have to do with these taboos. It’s just about triangulating everyone in the relationship.

Gretchen: I guess that makes sense in the sense that – so when I’m talking to, especially, younger relatives, like ones that are little kids, I might refer to my own mother as “Aunt Whatever” if I’m talking to my young cousin because I know that if this kid is two or something, they don’t quite understand how all of the complex kinship terms work. So I’m gonna use the one that places myself in their position.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: Or especially, if you see a young child, and you’re like, “Where’s Mummy,” you don’t mean where’s your own mum, you mean where’s the child’s mum.

Lauren: Yeah, so we can do these triangulations. We just do them in our own head and position ourselves like the other person.

Gretchen: Right. And we don’t have an additional set of vocabulary for it.

Lauren: This is an entirely separate set of vocabulary to help navigate the three-way relationship.

Gretchen: Yeah, that’s really interesting.

Lauren: It’s super interesting.

Gretchen: I can definitely see why that would be useful in certain circumstances, especially if you have a complex network of kin.

Lauren: There are complex words that are encoded into the language that aren’t encoded into ours, but there are also examples in Australian languages where these things get encoded into the grammar as well. In Kayardild there is – coming back to this harmonic-generations thing. I will use a different pronoun if I’m talking about me and someone in my own generation, or me and my grandparent, compared to me and my father, or my child, because the father or child are not – they’re disharmonic generations. Whereas, my siblings and my grandparents and my grandchildren are my harmonic generations. So there are entirely different pronoun forms depending on whether I’m referring to a group of people in my harmonic generations or non-harmonic generations. There’s a whole paper on this that I really love from Nick Evans back in 2003 that I’ll link to. The thing I really love about it is that Evans refers to this kind of phenomenon as “kintax.”

Gretchen: “Kintax?” Oh, that’s really good!

Lauren: Where the kinship system is so ingrained into the language that it becomes part of the grammar.

Gretchen: The kinship system is in the syntax. It’s “kintax.”

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: That actually – it sounds like a kind of tax that – a fee that you impose upon your family a little bit.

Lauren: Only if you’re not thinking of it with your linguist brain.

Gretchen: Only if you’re not thinking with your linguist brain. “Kintax.” That’s really good. Another linguistic system that I find really interesting that encodes family relationships in a different sort of way is the situation in Icelandic. Icelandic speakers will have names like – you might get, like, “Leif Erikson,” who is the son of Erik the Red, which a famous Viking. And then –

Lauren: Oh, yeah, “Erik’s son.” Sorry, just have to point out the obvious.

Gretchen: Who’s, literally, “the son of Erik,” yeah. But then Leif’s son doesn’t become something-something-also-Erikson. He becomes, I don’t know, like, “Sven Leifson.” This system is vaguely familiar to English speakers because we have names like “Davidson,” and “Peterson,” and “Johnson,” and stuff like that that have the “son” in them. But they’re no longer active.

Lauren: There was a recent History of English podcast episode where Kevin Stroud looks at how this changes in the Middle English period. We did have – you would be “Christopher Robertson.” And then, you’d have “William Christopherson,” who would then be having children who were like, “Thomas Williamson.” But then, eventually, those names froze. The whole idea of surnames is really central to English and really weird to Icelandic people.

Gretchen: Yeah, whereas in Icelandic, all of these get created. You also have the equivalence of, you know, like, “Leif’s daughter.” She’s not gonna get the last name “Leifson.” She’s gonna be “Leifsdottir.”

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And in Icelandic, when you refer to someone, you know what their father’s name is, or sometimes their mother’s name – if they get named after their mother. They don’t have the custom of referring to people by their surname in formal contexts. Political leaders or dignitaries in Iceland – the correct formal way to refer to them is by their first name because the only context in which you would use “So-and-So’s son,” or “So-and-So’s daughter” is when you’re saying the full name, not as a replacement for their name.

Lauren: I love that everyone’s been on a name bender at the moment because, obviously, with an imminent human to name so have I. But there’s also a great Allusionist episode recently where Helen Zaltzman chats to some people in Iceland about their naming conventions and about the way that surnames aren’t static, but they change with each generation.

Gretchen: Yeah, and I found the Iceland thing really interesting because I realised that in the context where I’m figuring out who all my second cousin once-removeds are, I also generally know, when I’m introducing myself in a family reunion context, which of my family members I need to name in order for the person I’m talking to and I to figure out how we’re supposed to know each other.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: I don’t have this encoded in my name anywhere except for the fact that I happen to be named after my grandmother. But like – it’s part of conversation even in a more limited context.

Lauren: Yeah, going to family reunions or weddings, and then, I’m Lauren, “Chris’s daughter.”

Gretchen: Yeah, exactly. Or like, “Who are you here for in this wedding?” Like, “Which side of the wedding are you here for?” Even if you’re not a relative, you can be like, “Well, I’m So-and-So’s friend from university.”

Lauren: Yeah, that’s putting you in the extended non-kinship group.

Gretchen: Yeah, or like, at academic conferences, you’re like, “Oh, well, I’m So-and-So’s advisee.” And they’re like, “Oh, I know So-and-So.” Or like, the kind of extended networks.

Lauren: Humans have this need to triangulate where they sit within social relationships.

Gretchen: Yeah, absolutely. It’s also interesting – I was intrigued to learn when researching this episode that the word “sibling” in English is both fairly new and also very old.

Lauren: Hm, new in terms of its current use?

Gretchen: Yeah, so it comes from Old English. “Sib” is actually related to the word for “self.” But in Old English, “sibling” is just any family member. And then, in the early 1900s – 1903 – geneticists started talking about inheritance, and they were like, “Guys, it’s getting really annoying to keep saying ‘brothers and/or sisters’ this whole time. It’d be really great if we had a gender-neutral term for this umbrella category because inheritance doesn’t care.” And so they reached into Old English and pulled out this term that had meant “any relative” and started using it to mean “brother and/or sister.”

Lauren: Useful.

Gretchen: I was like, “This seems like a totally unremarkable word for me. It’s totally part of my active vocabulary. I didn’t acquire it when I was ten, like third cousin once-removed.” And yet, it’s a surprisingly recent innovation.

Lauren: I didn’t realise it was that recent. But one recent-ish innovation that I’ve enjoyed bringing into my vocabulary is a word on analogy, which is, instead of saying “nieces and nephews” all the time, saying “niblings.”

Gretchen: That’s fantastic. I like “niblings” a lot.

Lauren: Which has the double benefit of being cute. It was first used in a 1951 article by a linguist who was talking about kinship terms across languages and was like, “Look, a gender neutral-term like ‘sibling’ is really handy, so I’m just gonna coin ‘nibling’ while we’re at it.”

Gretchen: That’s great. I’ve also been seeing some people who are non-binary or gender queer trying to come up with terms for like, “Oh, well, one of my siblings is having a child. I want that kid to call me something, but I don’t want to be called ‘Aunt’ or ‘Uncle’ What other term can I come up with here?” I’ve seen a couple examples. I don’t think there’s one “nibling” go-to yet, but there’s a bunch of options like “pibling,” “parent-sibling.”

Lauren: Oh, I like “pibling.”

Gretchen: It’s kind of cute. It works very well in analogy or portmanteaus like “Auntle” or “Ancle.” I’ve seen “Unty,” which is like “Uncle” and “Aunty.” Or “Titi,” which is, I think, based on the Spanish – “Tio” and “Tia” are used for “Uncle” and “Aunt,” respectively. “Titi” is combining those. Or “Zizi,” similarly, for “Zio” and “Zia,” which is the Italian equivalent.

Lauren: And we’ve seen lots of examples of individual families innovating terms. I feel like if the system isn’t working for you within kinship, making it work for you and your family, however it’s structured, is a great idea.

Gretchen: Yeah, I think it’s very easy to make it to catch on in an individual family because if you tell a kid, “Here’s what to call me,” the kid doesn’t know any different. It works great for grandparents, and I think it should work really well for other family members as well. It’ll be interesting to keep following that, because maybe in another generation or two, people will be like, “What do you mean ‘pibling’ was only invented in the 2000’s? It’s clearly part of my active vocabulary. You mean ‘nibling,’ and ‘pibling,’ and ‘sibling,’ were all once innovative?” Which I think is a really interesting corner of the lexicon.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And you can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLingustic.com.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistics questions, and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include: hyperforeignisms, multilingual babies, and a Q&A with both of us. You can also help us pick the next topic by becoming a patron. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay too. We really appreciate it if you could recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producers are A. E. Prevost and Sarah Dopierala, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, and our production assistants are Celine Yoon and Fabianne Anderberg, and our music is by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#language #linguistics #episode 27 #transcripts #family #kin #kinship #English #Syuba #Murrinhpatha #names #words #generations

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peace-coast-island · 5 years

Text

Diary of a Junebug

Abstract art and podcasts

Lately, I’ve been in an art block. With all the events going on and such, things like art journaling, painting, crafts have fallen to the wayside. It’s been a while since I participated in arts and crafts day so I definitely needed this.

When you fall out of habit with something, it can be a bit hard to get back into it. Today’s theme for arts and crafts day is abstract art and when I think of abstract art, I see various shapes, patterns and colors. Since I enjoy doodling patterns, I thought that inspiration would come to me easily.

Turns out I was wrong because I was constantly drawing a blank. I did a bunch of random doodles but I just wasn’t feeling it. And when an idea did pop in my head, when I tried to execute it, the end result was disappointing. There’s nothing more frustrating like staring at a blank canvas in the mood to create but having no inspiration at all.

Needing some sort of distraction, I turned on a podcast. Since I was busy, I needed to catch up on a bunch of shows and now seemed to be a good time to do so. I listened to Lavi’s podcast first as I was mostly caught up with that aside from the episode I had yet to listen to. If that helped spark some inspiration then I’ll binge on the others.

In a way listening to a podcast did help me get out of my art block, but I spent most of the time paying attention to the show then drawing. It wasn’t my best artwork but at least it got me to at least awaken my creativity.

This particular podcast focused on a topic that I didn’t expect Lavi to talk about on her show considering that she isn’t a mother. The guests are model Andi Quintana - a friend of Jamie’s - and Rose Emmerdale - one of my favorite authors - two people I never expected to get together since they’re from completely different circles.

The topic of discussion is about mom guilt. Andi and Rose are divorced mothers, both were in marriages that were more out of obligation than love. One thing the discussion focused on was about how not everyone is meant to be a parent and the guilt they hold for not being able to be the mother their kids need. It was an interesting and thought provoking episode, one that got my gears turning.

Andi was a former child actress who stared alongside her brother in a family sitcom. As an adult she wanted to pursue fashion design but didn’t have much success. With her career going nowhere she reluctantly moved back to her hometown and was pressured to settle down. Andi spoke about her upbringing and the mindset of her small hometown as most of the elders were set in their ways. She struggled with being a mother, which she described as being miscast, along with being a doting wife. Although she loves her children, she can’t help but feel distant towards them, like she’s more of a caretaker than a parent.

After walking out on her family for a bit out of frustration and boredom, Andi decided that she couldn’t live like that anymore. Her husband felt the same so after talking it out instead of ignoring the problem as usual, the two felt it was best to separate. Of course their families - aside from a few like Andi’s brother and grandmother - reacted negatively. When she and her husband divorced, it caused rifts in the family, which was probably for the best in retrospect. On a side note, Andi’s brother Mickey - a well known actor - was stuck in a similar situation minus being a parent and stood up to his parents as well not long after Andi did. Out of her family, the only two members who Andi keeps in contact with regularly is her brother and grandmother.

The split was amicable and the kids moved in with their grandmother since they adored each other and often stayed with her a lot anyway while their parents worked. While things have worked out well that way, Andi can’t help but feel sort of guilty for not always being there for her kids. She just wasn’t meant to be a mother and she didn’t want her kids to be raised by someone who’s only raising them out of obligation like she was. It wasn’t hard to decide where the kids would live since her grandmother was pretty much raising them. Andi sees her kids and grandma often and it’s a much happier arrangement that way because when she’s there she wants to be with her kids.

As for Rose, her marriage came together in an interesting way. Basically her grandmother left an inheritance for her and her siblings but they have to follow a bunch of tasks in order to get it. In Rose’s case, she had to get married, which in my opinion sort of a dick move. When her grandma was alive, Rose had a boyfriend she had been seeing for years but he turned out to be an abusive cheater. So in the span of a few months Rose had to get hitched. Meanwhile her siblings and cousin had other tasks, some which were also shady, and that left them mixed feelings about their beloved grandma.

So she finds a guy, a bartender she met on a cruise ship, got married, and had twins a year later. The whole thing about her grandma’s will is a lot to unpack and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a to more resentment than she’s letting on. Rose’s marriage wasn’t as unhappy as Andi’s, but it was unfulfilling. Although she got along with her husband, there wasn’t really anything else. She found herself preferring work than spending time with her family, longing for travel and independence and autonomy. As time went on she and her siblings felt trapped as they lived their lives on their grandma’s terms since she believed that she knew what’s best. It took a long time for her to realize that she wasn’t happy, mainly because she told herself to suck it up and accept it.

Once she told herself that she wasn’t going to live like this anymore, it felt like a weight was off her shoulders. Rose was the first to sort of rebel against her grandmother and her siblings followed when they came to the same conclusion too. For a while her marriage was going through a rough patch -something that she saw coming for a long time - and both agreed to part ways. As for the twins, the hardest thing for Rose and her ex to admit is that kids were never really a part of their plan. The pregnancy was unexpected but at the time they wanted to be parents and believed that they could do it. Coming from a large family and being the oldest daughter, Rose felt that it was kind of expected for her to be a mother so she went with it. But when she became a mother, it was nothing like what she expected and she sort of hated it, which made her feel bad.

It’s been a little over a year since Rose’s divorce and she doesn’t regret it. The twins primarily live with her cousin, who has a kid of her own. Her ex went back to being a bartender on a cruise ship and she’s be to put all her focus on her writing career. She made a lot of difficult decisions - some which still keep her up at night sometimes - but she knows that in the end it was for the best.

While listening to the podcast, I found myself absentmindedly doodling various shapes and scribbles. It’s not really abstract art, but at least it’s something. Sometimes creativity comes and goes so you can’t really force it out. And sometimes you might find inspiration of some sort in unexpected sources, like a podcast talking about guilt and lack of maternal instincts, but not in a way you’d expect it.

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#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

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