Burmese kinship
The Burmese kinship system is a fairly complex system used to define family in the Burmese language. In the Burmese kinship system:
- 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.
History
Many of the kinship terms used in Burmese today are extant or derived from Old Burmese. These include the terms used to reference siblings and in-laws.Grades of kinship
The Burmese kinship system identifies and recognizes six generations of direct ancestors, excluding the ego:- Be - great-grandfather's great-grandfather
- Bin - great-grandfather's grandfather
- Bi - great-grandfather's father
- Bay - great-grandfather
- Pho - grandfather
- Phay - father
- Tha -
- Myi -
- Myit -
- Ti -
- Tut or Hmyaw -
- Kyut -
- Hset -
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
- male: ဖ
- eldest: ကြီး or အို
- second youngest: လတ်
- youngest: လေး, ထွေး, or ငယ်
Relationships
The Burmese kinship system also recognizes various relationships between family members that are not found in English, including:- တူအရီး - relationship between uncle or aunt and nephew or niece
- ခမည်းခမက် - relationship between parents of a married couple
- မယားညီအစ်ကို - relationship between the husbands of two sisters
- သမီးမျောက်သား - relationship between cousins, used in Arakanese language