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 edit
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 edit
The Burmese kinship system identifies and recognizes six generations of direct ancestors, excluding the ego:[4]
- 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:[4]
- 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 edit
Kinship terms differ depending on the degree of formality, courtesy or intimacy. Also, there are regional differences in the terms used.
Common suffixes edit
- female: မ (ma)
- male: ဖ (hpa)
Burmese also possesses kin numeratives (in the form of suffixes):
- eldest: ကြီး[5] (gyi) or အို[5] (oh)
- second youngest: လတ်[5] (lat)
- youngest: လေး[5] (lay), ထွေး[5] (htway), or ငယ်[5] (nge)
Relationships edit
The Burmese kinship system also recognizes various relationships between family members that are not found in English, including:[4]
- 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[6]
Members of the nuclear family edit
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 edit
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 edit
- ^ မာလေး (1977). မြန်မာ့ဆွေမျိုးစပ် ဝေါဟာရများ (PDF) (in Burmese). စာပေဗိမာန်. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-12-15. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
- ^ Burling, Robbins (October 1965). "Burmese Kinship Terminology". American Anthropologist. 67 (5): 106–117. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00740. JSTOR 668758.
- ^ a b Tun, Than (1958). "Social life in Burma, AD 1044-1287" (PDF).
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Myanmar-English Dictionary. Myanmar Language Commission. 1993. ISBN 978-1-881265-47-4.