Chinese Families Addressing

Chinese Families Addressing

In Yuyu's google plus post about Chinese members with characters, she introduced how to address family members in Chinese. Now we will have a more detailed look at Chinese families.

China is has a large population and a Chinese family usually consists of 2 or more generations living together. In old China,  “四世同堂sìshìtónɡtánɡ”(four generations living together) is a very common phoneme. But now, few new couples want to have more than two children. In the 21century, with the implementation of the only child policy and the increasing cost of raising a child, China’s birth rate has come to a historical low. As a result, many children now don’t have sisters (姐妹jiěmèi) or brothers（兄弟xiōnɡdi）.

                                                                 A Chinese Family

But as the generation of 80s or 90s, we still have brothers or sisters to play with. Now let’s see how to introduce our family members in Chinese.

“爷爷奶奶yéyenǎinɑi” are grandfather and grandmother on father’ side, and together they can also be called as “祖父母zǔfùmǔ”. 

“姥爷姥姥lǎoyélǎolɑo” are grandfather and grandmother on mother’s side， and they can also be called as“外祖父母wàizǔfùmǔ”.

“父母fùmǔ” is a compound word including “父fù” and “母mǔ”， which is often used in written language, and in spoken we often use “爸爸bàbɑ” to replace “父” and “妈妈māmɑ” to replace “母”.

“姐妹jiěmèi” is also a compound word, including two nouns “姐”and “妹”. In English, no matter elder sister or younger sister, we just say they are our sisters. But in Chinese, the elder sister is called “姐姐jiějie” and the younger sister is called “妹妹mèimei”

“兄弟xiōnɡdi” is also a compound word. “兄xiōnɡ” means the elder brother , that is “兄长xiōnɡzhǎnɡ”， and it is often replaced by “哥哥ɡēɡe” in spoken language. “弟dì” is the younger brother, ”弟弟dìdi” is often used orally.

“叔叔shūshu” represents our uncles on fathers’ side and they are younger than our fathers, and we call their wives “阿姨āyí”. 

“伯父bófù” represents our fathers’ elder brothers and we call their wives “伯母bómǔ”. We should notice that in China, “叔叔阿姨, 伯父伯母” are also honorifics to address people with whom we have no blood relationship but are at our parents’ age.

Here are some examples:

xiǎomínɡ，nǐjiā yǒujǐkǒurén？

小明， 你家有几口人？

Xiaoming, how many people are there in your family?

wǔɡè，yǒu wǒde bàbɑmāmɑ，yíɡèɡēɡe，yíɡèmèimeihéwǒ。

五个，有我的爸爸妈妈，一个哥哥，一个妹妹和我。

Five, there are my parents, my brother, my sister and I.

zhàopiànshànɡ zhèɡe zhànnǐbàbɑ pánɡbiānde shìshuíā？

照片上这个站你爸爸旁边的是谁啊？

Who is the person standing beside your father in this photo?

Nàshì wǒdàbó，zhǐbǐ wǒbàbɑ dàliǎnɡsuì。

那是我大伯，只比我爸爸大两岁。

That’s my uncle, who is just two years older than my father.

Can you name some other Chinese family appellations? Have a try!