Mandarin Learning Basic

I have been post before about to how to calling your family in mandarin, like how to call your grandpa, grandma, uncle, auntie, cousin, etc. Now I will talk more detail about the this relationship and how to pronounced in mandarin, where I forgot in the last post.

Take an example your father have five brothers, and he is the no.3, this means he has two older brothers and three younger brothers. Now, how we call the father’s brother?

大伯 pronounced ‘da(4) bo(1)’ means ‘first uncle’
二伯 pronounced ‘er(4) bo(1)’ means ‘second uncle’
四叔 pronounced ‘si(4) shu(1) means ‘fourth uncle’
五叔 pronounced ‘wu(3) shu(1) means ‘fifth uncle’
小叔 / 六叔 pronounced ‘xiao(3) shu(1) / liu(4) shu(6)’ means ‘sixth uncle’

We can see the first uncle we use 大, this character means ‘big’ in the english’, we use this in mandarin, and the last we use 小, means ‘small’. This is the same for your father’s sisters.

How about they childs? In English, we use ‘cousin’, this is a little different from mandarin. If the childs from your father’s brother, we use 堂 read ‘tang(2)’ and the other relationship we use 表 read ‘biao(3)’. For example:

堂兄 read ‘tang(2) xiong(1)’ this is for calling your older cousin (male) from our father’s brother.
表弟 read ‘biao(3) di(4)’ this is for calling your younger cousin (male) from other relationship, like your father’s sisters, mother’s brothers or mother’s sister.

In the post before, we have know how to call auntie, now for their husband.
姑丈 read ‘gu(1) ‘zhang(4)’, the husband from our auntie (father’s relative).
姨丈 read ‘yi(2) zhang(4)’, the husband from our auntie too (mother’s relative).

Ok, take a break, remind me if I forget something, see you next time….