[Xmca-l] Re: kinship

Sun Jan 7 15:37:36 PST 2018

James not only calls the use of the "room" radical and the "pig" in the
Chinese character etymology but also refers to the Chinese oracle (yes, the
Book of Changes and oracle bones, the very earliest forms of writing on
sheep shoulder blades and tortoise shells that are cast in the fire in
order to observe their cracking). If James is warning us not to make too
much of this historical detail, he's right: it's a little like reminding
people that the word "family" in English derives from a Latin term for
household servants.

I agree that we can't use this as evidence to explain, for example, the
fact that when a Korean child comes home from school, the usual response of
the mother is something like "You're here" (even when the child is actually
returning from years of overseas study!). I can't use the fact that the
Chinese word for "family" refers to rooms and livestock to explain why my
mother-in-law and even my wife always avoided the kind of mushy talk that
constitutes family celebrations in the West and much prefered to complain
about housing problems, food and television programming on the rare
occasions we reunited at Spring Festival. It's not etymological.

It is cultural, though. So for example both Chinese and Korean have family
naming systems that make distinctions between maternal and paternal aunts
and uncles in a way that is impossible in English, and in Korean the word
for an older brother has nothing to do with the word for a younger brother,
but the word for younger brother doesn't distinguish gender, as the English
word does. In Korean, to say "cousin", you have to say exactly what degree
of separation you have ("three degrees"); I don't think anybody but an
anthropologist or a literature major can explain exactly what "second
cousin twice removed" means in English. Which suggests inattention to
kinship--making the relationship between housing and kinship explicit or
leaving it implicit?

I think that what Rod is really asking about is words like 익숙한 ("familiar",
i.e. "easily recognizable") and 熟悉 ("familiar", i.e. "practiced"). They
have nothing to do with either housing or kinship, and in fact the idea
that there might be some inner connection that has nothing to do with the
context of situation seems rather puzzling to my learned (and hence rather
feeble) Sino-Korean sensibilities. But maybe James can correct me here.

David

PS: There is this story on the BBC about a girl baby from Suzhou who was
left in the street during the one-child policy with a Chinese poem in her
swaddling clothes. She was adopted and brought up as an American, but when
she was in her twenties, her parents had the poem translated, and
discovered that the parents could not afford the fines and the lack of
housing that having an extra child would mean but that they would go and
wait in Hangzhou on the child's birthday for the rest of their lives, in
the hope that some day she would have the poem translated and come and meet
her "family" on the Duanqiao there. Duanqiao is the "broken bridge"; it's
actually quite beautiful and completely undamaged, but it is the scene of
a heartbreak scene in the opera "The White Snake", and inspired the couplet:

"断桥桥不断，残雪雪未残"

"The broken bridge is a bridge unbroken, and the lingering snow (i.e. White
Snake, who is a snake spirit in love with an unworthy mortal) is snow that
won't linger."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHUGHRBmg2o

Of course, the BBC made a reality show out of this, insisting on following
both the girl and her Chinese parents with a movie camera during their
reunion. There was a lot of shrieking and screaming and crying on the
Chinese side; on the American side not so much (but the daughter said she
felt overwhelmed by the love). What the mother kept saying to her daughter,
over and over again, was "You cannot understand what I am saying!"

dk

David Kellogg

Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'

Free e-print available (for a short time only) at

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full

On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 7:45 AM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:

> Just to add an etymological aspect that you might be interested to know
> (this is because Chines is logographical).
>
> According to the Chinese Oracle, family 家 has two parts: the upper
> part 宀 refers
> to "room"; the lower part 豕 refers to "pig". In the ancient times, people
> raised pigs in their houses, so having pigs in a house was a hallmark of
> living. In modern Chinese, family also indicates "relationship", e.g. 亲如一家
> as close as a family.
>
> James
>
>
> *_____________________________________*
>
> *James Ma*  *https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>   *
>
>
> On 7 January 2018 at 21:30, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In Chinese and in Korean, the word "family" is related to housing rather
> > than to kinship. In European languages it is the other way around. This
> > does suggest something semantic, no?
> >
> > David Kellogg
> >
> > Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> > Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> > Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
> >
> > Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
> >
> > http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 6:22 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
> >
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Martin,
> > > Well that is a difficult question to answer without knowing what you
> mean
> > > by "family"?
> > > What in the world do you mean by "family"?
> > > -greg
> > >
> > > On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 12:59 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > I am struggling with the way ‘family’ and ‘kinship’ have been
> defined,
> > or
> > > > not defined, in psychology and anthropology. One question that has
> > > occurred
> > > > to me is whether a word equivalent to ‘family’ exists in every
> > language.
> > > > When I Google this, Google responds ‘Ask Siri’…  :(
> > > >
> > > > Anyone have an idea?
> > > >
> > > > Martin
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> > > Assistant Professor
> > > Department of Anthropology
> > > 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> > > Brigham Young University
> > > Provo, UT 84602
> > > WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
> > > http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
> > >
> >
>
>
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