Burmese kinship
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The Burmese kinship system is a fairly complex system used to define family in the Burmese language.[1]
In the Burmese kinship system:[2]
- Maternal and parental lineages are not distinguished, except for members of the parents' generations.
- Relative age of a sibling relation is considered.
- Gender of the relative is distinguished.
- Generation from ego is indicated.
Grades of kinship
The Burmese kinship system identifies and recognizes six generations of direct ancestors, excluding the ego:[3]
- Be (ဘဲ) - great-grandfather's great-grandfather (6 generations removed)
- Bin (ဘင်) - great-grandfather's grandfather (5 generations removed)
- Bi (ဘီ) - great-grandfather's father (4 generations removed)
- Bay (ဘေး) - great-grandfather (3 generations removed)
- Pho (ဘိုး) - grandfather (2 generations removed)
- Phay (ဖေ) - father (1 generation removed)
The Burmese kinship system identifies seven generations of direct descendants, excluding the ego:[3]
- Tha (သား) - (1 generation removed)
- Myi (မြေး) - (2 generations removed)
- Myit (မြစ်) - (3 generations removed)
- Ti (တီ) - (4 generations removed)
- Tut (တွတ်) or Hmyaw (မျှော့) - (5 generations removed)
- Kyut (ကျွတ်) - (6 generations removed)
- 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
- female: မ (ma)
- male: ဖ (hpa)
Burmese also possesses kin numeratives (in the form of suffixes):
- eldest: ကြီး[4] (gyi) or အို[4] (oh)
- second youngest: လတ်[4] (lat)
- youngest: လေး[4] (lay), ထွေး[4] (htway), or ငယ်[4] (nge)
Relationships
The Burmese kinship system also recognizes various relationships between family members that are not found in English, including:[3]
- တူအရီး (tu ayi) - relationship between uncle or aunt and nephew or niece
- ခမည်းခမက် (khami khamet) - relationship between parents of a married couple
- မယားညီအစ်ကို (maya nyi-ako) - relationship between the husbands of two sisters
- သမီးမျောက်သား (thami myauk tha) - relationship between cousins, used in Arakanese language[5]
Members of the nuclear family
| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Father | ဖခင် pha khin | အဖေ a phay ဖေဖေ phay phay | Father | |
| Mother | မိခင် mi khin | အမေ a may မေမေ may 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 | မ ma | Sister | ||
| Younger sister (male ego) | နှမ hna ma | Sister | ||
| Younger sister (female ego) | ညီမ nyi ma | Sister | ||
| Husband | လင် lin | Husband | Informal: ယောက်ျား (yaukkya). Formal: ခင်ပွန်း (khinbun). | |
| Wife | မယား maya | Wife | Informal: မိန်းမ (meinma). Formal: ဇနီး (zani). | |
| Son | သား tha | Son | ||
| Daughter | သမီး thami | Daughter |
Members of the extended family
| Immediate lineage | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes |
| Parent's father | ဖိုး pho | Grandfather | ||
| Parent's mother | ဖွား phwa | Grandmother | ||
| Father's elder brother | ဘကြီး ba gyi | Uncle | ||
| Father's younger brother | ဘလေး ba lay | Uncle | The youngest uncle may be called ဘထွေး (ba dway). | |
| Father's elder sister | အရီးကြီး ayi gyi | Aunt | ||
| Father's younger sister | အရီးလေး ayi lay | Aunt | The youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay). | |
| Mother's elder brother | ဦးကြီး u gyi | Uncle | ဝရီး (wayi) is now obsolete. | |
| Mother's younger brother | ဦးလေး u lay | Uncle | ||
| Mother's elder sister | ဒေါ်ကြီး daw gyi | Aunt | Also ကြီးတော် (kyidaw). | |
| Mother's younger sister | ဒေါ်လေး daw lay | Aunt | The youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay). | |
| First cousin | မောင်နှမ တဝမ်းကွဲ maung hnama ta wun gwe | First cousin | Lit. "siblings one womb removed" | |
| Nephews and nieces | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes |
| Sibling's son | တူ tu | Nephew | ||
| Sibling's daughter | တူမ tuma | Niece | ||
| In-laws | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes |
| 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 wife | ချွေးမ chwayma | daughter-in-law | ||
| Daughter's husband | သမက် thamet | son-in-law | ||
| Spouse's father | ယောက္ခထီး yaukkahti | father-in-law | ||
| Spouse's mother | ယောက္ခမ yaukkhama | mother-in-law | ||
References
- ↑ မာလေး (1977). မြန်မာ့ဆွေမျိုးစပ် ဝေါဟာရများ (PDF) (in Burmese). စာပေဗိမာန်.
- ↑ Burling, Robbins (October 1965). "Burmese Kinship Terminology". American Anthropologist. American Anthropological Association. 67 (5): 106–117. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00740. JSTOR 668758.
- 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.
- 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. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London: 147–162.
- ↑ Myanmar-English Dictionary. Myanmar Language Commission. 1993. ISBN 1-881265-47-1.
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