This one literally means my child. In Irish songs, it often gets transcribed as alanna. You can easily improve your search by specifying the number of letters in the answer. Many Chinese kinship terms incorporate words that indicate different types of relations (Ill call them relation markers), especially relations by blood and by marriage. Cantonese dictionary for Windows, Mac, and Linux - Reddit Gweilo or gwailou ( Chinese: ; Cantonese Yale: gwilu, pronounced [ki lu] ( listen)) is a common Cantonese slang term for Westerners. When talking about a friends partner, you might use the word jowa. This means my little darling. 2. 20 Commonly Used British Terms of Endearment | FluentU English All Rights Reserved. Just like how you might address others as Sir or Maam if you dont know the other persons name, Chinese speakers also use similar titles when speaking to strangers. It means big friend, but dont think about it too hard the person doesnt have to literally be big. Get 40% off + 10 languages + 14 day free trial. heres a crash course on Chinese numerals, this video by Off The Great Wall for a quick recap, this Omniglot article for a table of Chinese kinship terms, cantonese family tree poster villagebookstoremn.com, Finding my family: Chinese graves at Ocean View Burial Park, Burnaby, BC - Past Presence, Comment les Chinois appellent-ils leurs grands-parents ? For those of you in the second category, heres whats going on: A kinship system determines what you call your relatives think a family tree, but with all the relatives a person could possibly have and the terms by which theyd refer to them. There is simply no way of separating the terms and their negative and xenophobic connotations. Most of the terms for cousin are shortened sibling terms ( [ze2], [mui6], [go1], [dai6]) with one of two relation markers [tong4] or [biu2] added in front. These items help the website operator understand how its website performs, how visitors interact with the site, and whether there may be technical issues. Normally when talking about your family members with others, the common family terms are fine to use. If these words were only used by racists or jokingly among friends, then this might not be a huge deal. In France you might dub your partner a little cabbage (petit chou), in the Arabic-speaking world your beauty could be compared to that of a gazelle (ghazal), and in Thailand you might be a little elephant (chang noi).