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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

> Spanish even distinguishes cuñado (brother-in-law by blood relation to your spouse) from concuñado, your spouse’s sibling’s husband—something like “co-brother-in-law”.

I've thought it confusing that English doesn't have separate terms for my brother's wife and my wife's sister (both of which are simply "sister-in-law"). Why are we content to describe these people as people of the same generation who are not blood relatives? This doesn't even get into the Spanish example above, which refers to two degrees of marriage separation.

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In Punjabi (my mother language), its same as Spanish (not exact words).

Different words for brother's siblings & wife's siblings. Bhra. Bhen. Bhabhi. Saali.

Different words for elder than my dad uncle v/s younger than my dad (& their wives, so total 4 words). Chacha. Chachi. Taaya. Taayi.

Different word for my brother's kids v/s sister's kids (& gender, so total 4 words). Bhateeja. Bhateeji. Bhaanja. Bhaanji.

Different word for my father in law v/s his brother (& their wives, again set of 4 words). Sahura. Sass. Taaya. Taayi.

A set of 4 words for my father's parents v/s my mum's parents. Daada. Daadi. Naana. Naani.

Almost any of the above' friends (same social circle) gets the same word. So same word for my father's brother and brother's friend.

These all might share a but of pronunciation here and there; otherwise all of them are totally independent (one word), & not derived from each other (like something-in-law).

Yeah, relations can be explained by combining words in most Hindustani languages

Maamu ka beta for example.

This phrase is somewhat equally translated in all local languages so people don't have to say "my maternal uncles son" which does the same thing but is much easier to explain and convey

What use would it have? The other languages mentioned (Chinese, Spanish, Japanese - I can't speak about Hebrew or Arabic) all come from very hierarchical societies that are still very hierarchical today whereas English has been seemingly on a mission to remove all such things for centuries, so thou was dropped for you by around 500 years ago and there's been a movement against honorifics like Miss or even the precision between the last few gendered words like actress.

Thus I'm not sure why this kind of detail would arise. in-law to a native basically indicates any of "they're not (really) my family", "they're not my problem" or "they poke their nose into my business when they shouldn't", or "I'm not going to share their name with you but I need some way to indicate a relationship". If the precision is needed it can be added later, like everything else in such a generalist (low context) language.

Consider how your feelings about this may be shaped by the language you speak.

Feel free to inform me of the differences between English and Spanish that could have this arise instead of the hierarchical nature of living in a Catholic society that was also under military dictatorship for a long period. Thanks.

> Why are we content to describe these people as people of the same generation who are not blood relatives?

Probably because the inhabitants of Britain decided at a certain point do ditch their Roman heritage. Romanian, a Romance langauge, is very similar to Spanish, we have cumnat for cuñado, soacră for the Spanish suegra (mother-in-law) and cuscri for consuegros, which goes to show that the family ties expressed by Romanian and Spanish most certainly come from the common ancestor that was Latin, and not from the "surrounding" societal norms (so to speak) or something like that.

Maybe us (I'm Romanian myself) having a distinct word for cumnat might have slightly changed how we view that family tie over the centuries, but it was not the distinctiveness of that family tie per se that "created" that special term, because we inherited that word from the Romans.

On the other hand, I think it's weird that there's a term for it at all. For how often I need to refer to either concept, "brother's wife" and "wife's sister" are both easy enough to say.

But it doesn't surprise me that we refer to then as people of the same generation; it's not much different from "step-brother" in that regard.

I'm a Spanish speaker and find it interesting that Swedish has dedicated (compound) words to refer to a person's maternal grandfather/grandmother/uncle/aunt (morfar/mormor/morbror/moster) and paternal ones (farfar/farmor/farbror/faster). In Spanish, for aunt we just have tía, to say something like moster we would say something like tía del lado de mi mamá or tía materna.

Also in Spanish the distinction between 'Amigo' and 'Compañero' or 'Compa' - 'Amigo' is what people think of as 'friend' in english but it's really more like a friendly acquaintance while 'compa' is much, much closer to how 'Friend' is used in English. Single-word distinctions in familiarity even stretches out to that level of interaction.

I think that's the whole language in a lot of ways, though, like you just have a larger dictionary in Spanish because you can modify or combine words in ways that avoid you having to say stuff like "my sister in law, like yeah my brother's wife". That's literally how many more syllables you have to say in English just to say what's said in one word in Spanish, the verbosity is just way higher. I think this leads English speakers to perceive Spanish as a 'fast' language (and some dialects certainly are) but I chalk it up to being able to say more with less words. This is also the case in every other language I've learned compared to English (Japanese, German - Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher anyone? ... and now Russian).

Spanish also lets you distinguish between carro nuevo and nuevo carro - being a brand new car vs a car that is new to you. Even there I had to throw in "brand" to make it clear the distinction.

Ok, I'm dying to ask this. Is it strange that `casado` (side note, I mentally translate it as: "shacked up (with)") takes estar (instead of ser, like your profession does? Though I figure back in the middle ages your profession really was permanent)

I guess it isn't, because it's just a transitory state until you "eres (ser) viudo"? :-p

I think is just as common to 'ser casado' as it is to 'estar casado' depends on who you ask

both are used, as this [1] points out, the "estar" vs "ser" depends on what aspect you want to highlight. "estoy casado" highlights the fact that you weren't before, and "soy casado" highlights the fact that you are now.

[1] https://www.spanishdict.com/answers/229597/soy-casado-o-esto...

It's the same for many indian languages too. "Acchamma" stands for paternal grandmother in my mother tounge. "Acchan" stands for dad and "Amma" is mom so the combination of those two is dad's mother. Similarly "ammamma" is maternal grandmother

and actually doesn't have a work for generic "grandparent"

It's the same in French, and I came to the conclusion that it must be for symmetry reasons: you are the brother in law of your sister in law (switch/replace genders as appropriate). I think it makes sense.

> Spanish even distinguishes cuñado (brother-in-law by blood relation to your spouse) from concuñado, your spouse’s sibling’s husband—something like “co-brother-in-law”.

I learnt something new today. So the English in-laws concept includes both one's spouse's sibling's, and sopuse's sibling's spouse?

IMO it doesn't. I would say my sister-in-law's husband.

IMO it can go either way. My wife's brother and his wife have been together since before I met my wife. I am equally close to both of them, and I would refer to her as my sister-in-law.

But I could see how some people might feel much closer to their spouse's sibling than to the spouse of that person (especially if the spouse came into the picture much later). But there's no elegant way to refer to these people, and it could be seen as offensive to demote them from "sister-in-law" to "brother-in-law's wife".

Taking things one step further, I don't know anyone who refers to their sibling-in-law's sibling as a brother-in-law/sister-in-law. But I suppose technically one could!

I think the problem is that if you had different words, it would stop being symmetric. You currently call your wife's brother the same term that he calls you. If there were different terms, you would refer to each other differently. You would no longer be able to say "we're brothers in law".

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