[HN Gopher] LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaug...
___________________________________________________________________
LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSi
stersDaughter
Author : atulvi
Score : 101 points
Date : 2023-09-21 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developer.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developer.apple.com)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Chinese kinship labels for the win
|
| https://blog.tutorabcchinese.com/chinese-learning-tips/famil...
| satvikpendem wrote:
| This is the same in many Indian languages too.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| That is interesting. In many English speaking cultures children
| will informally refear to their mother's parents and father's
| parents by different names even if formally they are both
| "grandmother", "grandfather" or "grandparent". I like that in
| China they formalised the names.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| There's also the phrases "{paternal,maternal}
| {grand{father,mother},uncle,aunt}"
| Svip wrote:
| Scandinavian languages have the same. >>Mormor<< (lit. mum
| mum) means maternal grandmother, while >>farmor<< (lit. dad
| mum) means paternal grandmother. Unfortunately, it doesn't
| appear to continue beyond that (so no >>mormormor<<).
| tobr wrote:
| "Mormorsmor" is a Swedish word.
| https://svenska.se/saol/?sok=mormorsmor
| hyggetrold wrote:
| Danish: after "mormor" there is "oldemor." After that you
| put "tip" in front just like "great" in English.
| lainga wrote:
| Related question (not really!) - two dads or moms - who
| should be called what?
| bobwaycott wrote:
| Keep it fun. Annual competitive bouts for the title.
|
| Option one: The winner becomes <dad|mom> _Prime_.
|
| Option two: The loser gets to live with _not_ <dad|mom> for
| a year. Or _runner-up_.
| hatthew wrote:
| I don't think it would be good to have a deterministic way
| to decide who gets to be called what in that case. The
| world would be a better place if we didn't make a
| distinction between mother and father, though obviously
| that's baked into almost all cultures and fully removing
| that would cause more problems than it would solve. Given
| that we don't have preexisting momentum to make a
| distinction between two parents of the same gender, I don't
| think we should try to standardize anything. Just pick two
| arbitrary titles like "dad" and "papa" and assign them
| randomly.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| A few possibilities for two dads, and it would be analogous
| for two moms:
|
| "Dad" (interchangeably either one)
|
| Use different father words as per family preference. These
| could be variations of the same family word, like dad and
| daddy or papa and pops, or entirely separate words like dad
| and papa.
|
| Use the dads' first names, either with a father word or
| without. I know some people who call their grandma "Mama
| <name>" because she acts like a second mother; no reason it
| couldn't refer to an actual mother. That happens to be a
| non-English example, but it could have been in English.
| Similarly, I know someone who addressed his (unfortunately
| now-deceased) parents by first name with no parent word, in
| English, even though he had the conventional pairing of a
| mother and a father.
|
| Lots of solutions.
| lynguist wrote:
| Not an issue: You already have two grandfathers and two
| grandmothers, how do you call them?
| ziofill wrote:
| A+ I'm so going to steal this.
| lainga wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow, I don't want my kids calling me
| "grandpa"...
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| lynguist is suggesting that you and your partner both be
| called with the same word
| lainga wrote:
| OH, I thought meant take the grandparent names and strip
| some common grandparent root from them or something
| complicated and etymological
| sensanaty wrote:
| Some languages do make a distinction between the
| patrilineal and matrilineal grandparents, though I
| suppose having 2 of the same gender parent means you just
| use the pat/matrilineal of whatever gender your parents
| are :P
| wizofaus wrote:
| I'd imagine kids that happen to grow up in households
| with two granddads or two grandmas would find solutions -
| I remember we called the latter two "grey grandma" and
| "white grandma" on the basis of their hair colour, though
| I'm not sure how often we used those names to their
| faces. And of course plenty of adults call their parents
| and step-parents or parents in law of the same sex the
| same thing. I'm curious if there are any languages that
| don't have separate words for "mum" and "dad" though.
| Tried googling but all the results were about how
| different languages use similar words for each term
| individually.
| lainga wrote:
| Wait, that _would_ work (for my specific use case).
| "White dad" and "brown dad". But - what would the PTA
| say...
| bradknowles wrote:
| For me, it was grandad (paternal) versus grandpa
| (maternal).
|
| Then for my grandmothers, they were both "granny" but I
| included their name (first name for paternal, last name
| for maternal).
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Not if your parents are siblings
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| While I called my grandmothers by different names, I
| called both my grandfathers the same name. They were
| never in the same room together, so it was never an
| issue.
| strken wrote:
| In my family we gave different words to the different
| grandparents, but chose more or less at random. This made
| the words unique and therefore more useful.
|
| It's not an "issue" for parents, exactly, but it is an
| interesting choice because of how much less trodden a
| path it is. Would you both go by dad? Would one or both
| be daddy, dadda, or pop? Would you use first names or
| diminutives after a certain age?
| robofanatic wrote:
| Even "Uncle". In english, Mom's brother and Dad's brother
| both are uncles -\\_(tsu)_/-
| Jiocus wrote:
| Like others noted in the thread about grandparents, in
| Scandinavia we'd say morbror (mother-brother) and farbror
| (father-brother).
|
| What's fun though is that 'farbror' can also be used (in
| Swedish) for any neutral/kindly spirited or acquainted old
| man, so maybe we're not too practical after all.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Also mom's sister's husband and dad's sister's husband.
|
| You can have a mother-in-law, a brother-in-law, a son-in-
| law, but there's no such thing as an uncle-in-law.
| kulahan wrote:
| The list is blowing my mind. A word for your mom's sibling's
| daughter if she's older than you, and another one if she's
| younger? What a dense piece of data!
| [deleted]
| klausa wrote:
| AIUI Korean and Farsi (among many others, I'm sure!) also have
| lots of very specific words for familial relationships.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_and_cross_cousins
|
| Kinship systems are neat.
| [deleted]
| satya71 wrote:
| English so inefficient when expressing human relationships.
| wizofaus wrote:
| And very imprecise. Virtually nobody gets it right when trying
| to describe a relationship with an nth cousin m times removed.
| And recently I tried to work out a fairly basic relationship
| between myself and my son's step-sisters - they're not
| biologically related to me at all, or even by (current)
| marriage, but it seemed like there should be a term for it.
| noblood wrote:
| Two of my cousins were adopted out, found the family as
| adults, and immediately had a child together. That child is
| now an adult, and members of his generation ask, what do we
| call the guy, "unclecousin"?
| miki123211 wrote:
| Languages like Polish are even worse, because you have to go
| in reverse, from the person described to yourself. It's the
| great great grandmother of the cousin of the uncle of the ex
| wife of your sister, not your sister's ex wife's uncle's
| great great grandmother.
| pndy wrote:
| The Old Polish had some pretty cool sounding terms for
| describing family relations that become forgotten, changed
| or dropped in favor of other words
|
| _dziewierz_ - husband 's brother sounds way more cooler
| than _szwagier_ imo
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| There is even
|
| CNLabelContactRelationElderCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathers
| SistersDaughter
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts/cnlabelco...
| flaghacker wrote:
| What value does this label have for English localization?
| 1propionyl wrote:
| It doesn't. But after all English speakers are only a small
| (<5%) minority of the world.
| gkbrk wrote:
| English is the most commonly spoken language in the world,
| followed closely by Chinese.
| drekipus wrote:
| 87% of percentages are made up in the spot.
| n2d4 wrote:
| It's correct if you read "English speakers" as "native
| English speakers": https://gurmentor.com/what-is-the-most-
| spoken-language-in-th...
| klausa wrote:
| "younger cousin (mother's sibling's daughter or father's
| sister's daughter)"
|
| If you have an iPhone, you can check all of those out by going
| to Contacts.app, tapping "edit" > add related name > tap on the
| blue "mother" > scroll down to bottom and tap on "All Labels".
| sdlfij3lkfjasij wrote:
| This feature is exclusively for the CN market. Where they have
| a very specific work for each of those.
|
| and it is probably to improve siri. So people can say "call Bo
| Bo " and Siri knows *exactly* which uncle you mean. which is
| probably some killer feature that only android phones from
| huwai had before.
| secretsatan wrote:
| I've always been terrible at diagnosing family relationships,
| what would be the end result in english? ( or any other language
| )
|
| Edit: or is it a word or phrase that doesn't exist in English?
| jachee wrote:
| It's largely a _concept_ that doesn't exist in English. All our
| parents' siblings' offspring are simply "cousins"; regardless
| of which parent, or which of their siblings, etc.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _CNLabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFat
| hersSistersDaught_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28712667 - Sept 2021 (132
| comments)
|
| _CNLabelContactRelation ​YoungerCousin&Negat
| iveMediumSpace;MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFath
| ersSistersDaughter_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341855 - July 2019 (176
| comments)
|
| Oh no. Am I going to have to figure out
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341959 again? Tweaks to HN
| title escaping since 20341855 are showing up just a bit there...
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Why
| [deleted]
| yegle wrote:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blogspot.r...
| FWIW there are handy calculators for situations like this.
| jandrese wrote:
| Dark Helmet: Before you die there is something
| you should know about us, Lone Star.
|
| Lone Starr: What?
|
| Dark Helmet: I am your father's brother's
| nephew's cousin's former roommate.
|
| Lone Starr: What's that make us?
|
| Dark Helmet: Absolutely nothing! Which is what
| you are about to become.
| [deleted]
| prosody wrote:
| Of possible interest to HNers, kinship terminology of different
| cultures is a subject that has a very elegant taxonomy. It was a
| major line of inquiry in early modern sociology, which tried to
| link other attributes of how societies were structured to how
| they named relations.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship_terminology
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I'm my own grandpa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkiOm-vmpcY
| waltbosz wrote:
| LabelContactRelationFathersBrothersNephewsCousinsFormerRoommate
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Spaceballs!
| vippy wrote:
| CNLabelContactRelationAbsolutelyNothingWhichIsWhatYouAreAbout
| ToBecome
| [deleted]
| bhouston wrote:
| This project seems like an architect just gave up and said fine,
| you get an enum value for any relationship you can think of, what
| do people want? And this was one suggestion.
|
| This enum could have been replaced with data model where you set
| of a bunch of relationship links:
|
| Relationship:
|
| - type: parent (up), child (down), sibling (sideways)
|
| - gender: male, female, ...
|
| I am confused by the "younger" denotation, because it seems
| strangely specific to just the last relationship, rather than all
| of the links.
|
| If you have a lot of relations, it would be easier to just create
| a family tree then you can skip having to have multiple duplicate
| links being created for say each cousin.
| klausa wrote:
| Making software that works across cultures (and especially _as
| many_ cultures as Apple's software does) is difficult.
|
| I guarantee you that every single one of those enum cases
| exists, because there is a language/culture where there is a
| specific word to describe that relationship; not "because an
| architect gave up".
| bhouston wrote:
| I didn't know there were words for those in other languages.
| I guess I'd still prefer an expressive composable model for
| them so that I could reason about them. At least know who is
| related to who in which way, rather than these enums. But I
| guess that is outside of the scope for Apple - they just want
| that short name in the UX somewhere when adding a contact.
| secretsatan wrote:
| Localizing, this falls into the things you thought about x
| are true.
|
| This is the end result of a bunch of switches and ifs in a
| ui where your model, in very specific circumstances, boils
| down to a few words that most people understand without
| computer programming experience.
| mrbadguy wrote:
| The point is that you don't need to reason about the
| relationship because the name, in the local language, tells
| you everything you need to know. Of course, if you don't
| speak the language then that's not useful but the code is
| written for the end user to be able to use the labels, not
| for the software or its developer to be able to parse the
| family tree :)
| mjr00 wrote:
| > I am confused by the "younger" denotation, because it seems
| strangely specific to just the last relationship, rather than
| all of the links.
|
| In many cultures you address someone differently depending on
| whether they are younger or older than you.
|
| > This enum could have been replaced with data model where you
| set of a bunch of relationship links:
|
| How is that going to look on the user side? Most people just
| want to label their contact "Mom" and be done with it, they
| don't want to construct a family tree and say "this person is
| an older female parent" or maybe even "older elder female
| parent" if they have two moms.
|
| You might think "well Mom is clearly an exception" but that's a
| very North America point of view. A lot of cultures would find
| it weird if you could label someone as eomeoni but not jangmo
| because they're equally important.
| ethansinjin wrote:
| I think this was motivated by non-English languages which have
| separate terms for different relations than English?
| calibas wrote:
| Apparently, Chinese uses different words for "cousin" depending
| on whether they're older or younger than you.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Dang.
|
| I always thought it was awkward that both [male spouse of
| sibling] and [male spouse of spouse's sibling] are _both_ called
| "Brother-in-law" in American English usage, but this level of
| specificity is _bananas_ to me.
| mulmen wrote:
| Why though? Where does this actually get used?
|
| This seems to represent two different relationships. The mother's
| sibling could be a brother. For the father a sister is specified.
| What about the father's brother's younger daughter?
|
| The description says younger daughter in both cases but the name
| doesn't specify. So what's the class for the older daughter of
| the mother's sibling or the father's sister?
|
| And if age is relevant what about the father's older sister's
| younger daughter, etc.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Why though? Where does this actually get used?
|
| Many Asian cultures, including Chinese, have a wider variety of
| kinship terms than English. The (unwieldy) name of this
| constant describes one such relationship which doesn't have a
| direct equivalent in English.
| klausa wrote:
| There are different words in different languages for those
| specific relationships; and some languages lack a "generic"
| words like "cousin" that you could use in English without
| knowing the relationship details.
|
| I'm not a speaker, but someone once explained to me that for
| example in Farsi, you can't just refer to someone's "cousin",
| without knowing the person's gender _and_ the two related
| parents genders.
| mulmen wrote:
| Ok so this is for i18n and in English would just be "cousin"?
| Can we assume there actually is a language somewhere that
| makes this particular distinction and has a word for it?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Yes.
| klausa wrote:
| Kinda!
|
| If you have a contact with that specific option set, it'd
| display as
|
| >younger cousin (mother's sibling's daughter or father's
| sister's daughter).
| miki123211 wrote:
| Book translators / authors must have a field day with this.
|
| Let's say that a character in book 1 suspects his cousin of
| committing a murder, and nothing else is revealed about that
| cousin (let's say it's a side plot) until book 5, where new
| evidence turns up and he is suddenly found guilty. If you
| differentiate between male and female cousin, how do you
| translate book 1 if book 5 hasn't been written yet?
|
| Even better, let's assume the books are finished, the author
| is dead, but you're translating to a language that
| differentiates between younger/older cousins / cousins on
| different sides of the family. You just pick whichever word
| you like more. Ten years later, Hollywood makes a movie
| adaptation, and the "male cousin" from your translation is
| played by none other than Angelina Jollie. Your readers are
| very confused.
|
| Translation is hard.
| trothamel wrote:
| Is it time for
| CNLabelFathersBrothersNephewsCousinsFormerRoommate? Perhaps as an
| alias for false?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-21 23:00 UTC)