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.
Contents
-
Grades of kinship 1
-
Extended family and terminology 2
-
Common suffixes 2.1
-
Relationships 2.2
-
Members of the nuclear family 2.3
-
Members of the extended family 2.4
-
References 3
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
-
^
-
^
-
^ a b c
-
^ a b c d e f
-
^
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