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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]

History

Many of the kinship terms used in Burmese today are extant or derived from Old Burmese.[3] These include the terms used to reference siblings and in-laws.[3]

Grades of kinship

The Burmese kinship system identifies and recognizes six generations of direct ancestors, excluding the ego:[4]

  1. Be (ဘဲ) - great-grandfather's great-grandfather (6 generations removed)
  2. Bin (ဘင်) - great-grandfather's grandfather (5 generations removed)
  3. Bi (ဘီ) - great-grandfather's father (4 generations removed)
  4. Bay (ဘေး) - great-grandfather (3 generations removed)
  5. Pho (ဘိုး) - grandfather (2 generations removed)
  6. Phay (ဖေ) - father (1 generation removed)

The Burmese kinship system identifies seven generations of direct descendants, excluding the ego:[4]

  1. Tha (သား) - (1 generation removed)
  2. Myi (မြေး) - (2 generations removed)
  3. Myit (မြစ်) - (3 generations removed)
  4. Ti (တီ) - (4 generations removed)
  5. Tut (တွတ်) or Hmyaw (မျှော့) - (5 generations removed)
  6. Kyut (ကျွတ်) - (6 generations removed)
  7. 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

Burmese also possesses kin numeratives (in the form of suffixes):

Relationships

The Burmese kinship system also recognizes various relationships between family members that are not found in English, including:[4]

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

  1. ^ မာလေး (1977). မြန်မာ့ဆွေမျိုးစပ် ဝေါဟာရများ (PDF) (in Burmese). စာပေဗိမာန်. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-12-15. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  2. ^ Burling, Robbins (October 1965). "Burmese Kinship Terminology". American Anthropologist. 67 (5): 106–117. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00740. JSTOR 668758.
  3. ^ a b Tun, Than (1958). "Social life in Burma, AD 1044-1287" (PDF).
  4. ^ a b c Sein Tu (September 1997). "Myanma Family Roles and Social Relationships". Myanmar Perspectives. Archived from the original on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Bradley, David (1989). "Uncles and Aunts: Burmese Kinship and Gender" (PDF). South-east Asian Linguisitics: Essays in Honour of Eugénie J.A. Henderson: 147–162. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2013-10-19.
  6. ^ Myanmar-English Dictionary. Myanmar Language Commission. 1993. ISBN 978-1-881265-47-4.
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