04.20.07

Meet the Uncles

Posted in Culture Clash, Linguistics at 8:15 pm by Benjamin Ross

For the past month, my Chinese girlfriend’s father has been in town visiting from Italy, where he now lives. This was my first time meeting either of her parents, and I was a little nervous at first. One of the most difficult aspects for me was addressing him. Although I have been living in China for 3 years, and speak Mandarin with a decent degree of fluency, I still find it awkward referring to my Chinese friends’ parents as 叔叔 (shu1 shu1) and 阿姨 (a1 yi2), which the dictionary defines as “uncle” and “aunt.” In the past, I had skirted around the issue through use of pronouns. However, before the visit, my girlfriend informed me that I needed to add a 叔叔 before the 你 (ni3) when addressing her father. For example. 叔叔，你要不要喝水．(Uncle, would you like to drink some water?). Leaving off the “uncle” would come off as disrespectful.

I believe part of the problem lies in the way these terms are translated. While the Chinese term for a paternal uncle is 叔叔and a paternal aunt is 阿姨, it is misleading to translate 叔叔 as “uncle” and 阿姨 as “aunt,” and leave it at that. A more accurate definition for these terms would be “respected person of the older generation.”

In the West, we are accustomed to personalization. Even in instances where titles are used, we often add a surname. Sometimes we drop the title and simply use the given name. For example, I call my physician “Dr. Glazer.” I call my friend (link) Todd’s father “Mr. Wesselhoeft.” I call the manager at Taco Bell “Frank.”

In China the conventions are different. I call my doctor 医生 yi1 sheng1 (doctor). I call the security guard in my apartment complex 保安bao3 an1 (guard). I call the shopkeeper near the guard station 老板 lao3 ban3 (boss). I call taxi drivers 师傅 shi1 fu4 (master), and I call shop assistants and waitresses 小姐 xiao3 jie3 (little sister) or 小弟 xiao3 di4 (little brother). Neither the family name nor the given name are ever used.

The use of titles is especially applicable to family members. Each unique family position has its own title. When dealing with members of older generations, only the title is used, not the given name. So for example, my girlfriend calls her father’s brother 叔叔 (shu1 shu1) but calls her mother’s brother 舅舅 (jiu4 jiu4). Her mother’s sister’s husband is 姨丈 (yi2 zhang4) while her father’s sister’s husband is 姑丈 (gu1 zhang4). In English, all four of these people would be called “uncle.” The Chinese title system gets even more elaborate when dealing with cousins and relatives two generations removed. When I am with my girlfriend, I must address her relatives with the same titles she uses. The only acceptation being her parents, whom she calls 妈妈 and爸爸 (ma1 ma1 and ba4 ba4) but whom I call 阿姨 and 叔叔 (a1 yi2 and shu1 shu1).

In a professional setting in China (i.e. doctor, taxi driver, etc.) an appropriate occupational title is used. When addressing with a family member or a close friend’s family member, the respective kinship title is used. When neither of these conditions are met (i.e. stranger, friend’s parents, old lady collecting bottles for recycling, etc.) the default respectful title for a member of the older generation is 叔叔 (shu1 shu1) for a man and 阿姨 (a1 yi2) for a woman.

Defining these two words as meaning “uncle” and “aunt” does not reveal their true functionality. For myself, this has caused me to feel awkward when using them in appropriate situations. By the time I understood the proper usage of these words, they had already been cemented into my brain as “uncle” and “aunt.” The same holds true when the situation is flipped around. The first time my girlfriend talked to my mother on the phone, her knee-jerk reaction was to call her “auntie.” She knew from watching American sit-coms that this was not appropriate in a Western context, but it still felt uncomfortable for her to refer to my mom as “Sally.” For me, after spending two weeks with my girlfriend’s father, it finally started to become natural to call him 叔叔. I think this coincided with my mind letting go of the implicit connection between 叔叔 and “uncle” and instead regarding it simply as an indication of respect for one of my elders.

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