I say "uncle", you say "DaJiu"

Kinship terms (mother, uncle, niece, etc.) are socially important and generally learned early in acquisition. Interestingly, different languages have different sets of terms. Mandarin, for instance, divides "uncle" into "father's older brother", "father's younger brother", and "mother's brother". Stranger things (to an anglophone, anyway) happen, too: In Northern Paiute, the kin terms for grandparents and grandchildren are self-reciprocal: you would use the same word to refer to your […]