Non gendered relative words

[Indigodreaming]

You have grandchild, granddaughter, grandson

You have parent, mother, father

You have sibling, sister, brother

But only neice/ nephew, and aunt/uncle

Why don't we have a non gendered word for them?

(Unless there is and I have forgotten ot)

Some people say nibling for niece/nephew, but it’s pretty cringe.

Some languages have words for them. I find it fascinating that we don’t!

Your siblings child

Cousins of course is the other way round. There is no one word meaning 'male cousin' or 'female cousin'!

What a non-issue.

I never thought about this, how true! I remember dd telling me they in the Korean language, there are two different words for your auntie. There is auntie dad’s sister and auntie mum’s sister! I thought that was interesting. I bet there’s another language somewhere where there’s no word for auntie or uncle. Languages are so fascinating.

It’s chat, not ‘world issues.’

I know.

To borrow from Reddit: name checks out

So why bother to come in and post ‘what a non-issue?’ Did you expect chat to be full of people only discussing important issues? It’s the entirely appropriate place for unimportant chat.

In Swedish, your mother's mother is your mormor and your mother's father is your morfar. Your father's mother is your farmor and your father's father is your farfar.

In some languages (Persian is one) there are different words for your mother's brother and your father's brother and these are meaningfully different relations.

I love that. It is so logical.

Do you know how 'chat' works?

In Icelandic, there is generally no distinction between aunt / niece / female cousin or between uncle/ nephew / male cousin. Just one word for all these female relatives (frænka) and one word for male relatives (frændi).

You can say something like 'sister's son' for example, if you need to, but mostly it's just frænka and frændi and nobody knows what generation you are even talking about.

Yes. I was expressing my opinion, and that is the very definition of chat, surely?

I contributed to the chat by airing my views. It's a free country.

So what was your opinion on the etemology of the English language having gendered words for some relative and not others?

I missed that in your so insightful comment of "what a non issue"

So its ok for you come and make a sweeping "so what" statement, but I noticed you felt talking about beans was important (in your posting history) - interesting /head tilt

A generic term for aunts/uncles and for niece/nephews would be a very welcome linguistic addition. "Nibling" doesn't sound quite right though... too close to sibling.

Sibspring - sibling's offspring
Parer - parent's brother or sister.

I'll just trademark those now.

I'll bite

Will we soon have non binary words for 'parent's sibling ' such as auntcle?

I’m French the same word is used for step-sister and sister in law - there isn’t a way to clarify the relationship without a family tree type explanation

Nibling is cringey, I can see it might be quicker than saying nieces and nephews when referring to a mixed sex group but it it so twee. I’d just refer to them as my DC’s cousins in that instance.

We are also lacking some distinctions between blood relatives and non-blood relatives, e.g. your aunt might be your mum's sister, or it might be your mum's brother's wife.

And your sister-in-law could be your brother's wife or your husband's sister (not a difference in whether they're a blood relative, obviously, but it's not really the same relationship).