#i'm bilingual on paper but irl i'm an idiot in 1.5 languages
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I thought the Chinese would have a kinship/relationship term for this (it can get very complicated) and I was right (context: am Chinese)
So assuming you're a woman married to a man, your brother-in-law's wife is your 大嫂 or 小婶 (da sao or xiao shen, depending on whether the BIL is older or younger than your brother) vs your sister-in-law (i.e. your husband's sister) is your 大姑 or 小姑 (da gu or xiao gu, depending on whether she's older or younger than your husband)
Assuming your BIL's wife's brother is older than her, he is your 外兄弟眷兄 (wai xiong di juan xiong, very broadly: extended family's [外兄弟] older brother [眷兄] with words that mark them as having many degrees of separation from you). Admittedly I had to use a relative calculator from here because I'm a banana (affectionate, derogatory) with limited Chinese ability (much to the disappointment of my family and teachers) but it sounds about right
And his daughter is your 外兄弟眷侄女 (wai xiong di juan zhi ni, very broadly: niece [眷侄女] from far-extended family [外兄弟])
(These terms are just relationship though, you wouldn't say "外兄弟眷侄女 can you pass the rice"; you'd probably just call them by their name)
Incidental to this cos I was playing with calculators: while the system is extensive with markers to indicate sex, age, maternal/paternal lineage, and more, it starts to lose nuance past the second degree (i.e. past your BIL's wife). Probably it was unlikely you'd ever meet these people for long enough to need to know what to call them
Also: all the calculators gave the equivalent of a "divide by zero" error when I tried gay relationships lol
I am searching for a term that may not exist:
I have a husband
He has a brother, who is my brother-in-law
My brother-in-law has a wife. Now colloquially, she is my sister in law, but is there a distinction to indicate she is also my husband's sister-in-law and not his sister? Is she my sister-in-law-in-law? My sister twice removed?
This is not actually the term I'm after but it'll help.
My brother-in-law's wife has siblings. Who are they in relation to me? I see my sister-in-law-in-law's brother more than I see her, but is there a way to explain that he's family?
Now, the real term I'm after: my sister-in-law-in-law's brother has a daughter. Is she my niece? Second cousin some degree removed??
Like, kinship trees vary wildly by culture, but I feel like there might be terms for these by-marriage relatives from inheritance law or something?
#i can FEEL my ancestor's disappointment as i struggle to translate#i'm bilingual on paper but irl i'm an idiot in 1.5 languages#also the reblogs on the OP's post are really interesting#so many languages!#language#linguistics
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