why does my hand smell like an old lady's neck - New Random Thread

[alex]

I am currently very much fascinated by how differently, even within the culturally and linguistically rather homogeneous cultural sphere of Germanic languages, we talk and think about blood relations. This realisation was triggered by coming across a reference to a "second cousin once removed" somewhere, which confused me, because I had heard both of "second cousins" and of "cousins once removed", but had always assumed, to the extent that I gave the matter any thought at all, that the two were actually synonyms. Wikipedia informed me that a "cousin once removed" is in fact the daughter or son of my first cousin (and the aforementioned second cousin once removed thus the son or daughter of my second cousin), which rather surprised me. As a German native speaker, I would think of the daughter of my cousin not as any kind of cousin at all, but rather as a niece - a niece of the second degree, to be precise. (In real life, I have never referred to my cousin's daughter as anything other than "my cousin's daughter" or "Nadine" - there is now also a "Lisa", but I've never met her and therefore haven't talked about her a whole lot - but if I was pressed to choose a label for her, it would definitely be a variation of the word "niece", not of the word "cousin".) This, in turn, reminded me of the peculiar fact that the Dutch language knows no distinction between the term "nephew" and the term "cousin", which I've always found a bit flabbergasting considering that the relationship between cousins tends to be of a rather different nature than that between uncle and nephew, for most people. (At least in colloquial Flemish, there is a term that's specific to the relationship between cousins, but not in standard language. And also colloquially, apparently some Dutch speakers refer to a nephew/niece as "aunt-sayer" or "uncle-sayer", which is pretty awesome, really.) So all of this is a bit long and rambling, but I do find it rather fascinating.

[ellaguru]

I'm trying to bring it about that my first cousin's six month old daughter's first words will be "first cousin once removed Arlo", but I fear that it might not happen.

While we have these distinctions around here, I don't think I know anybody who actually gets them right.

[Greg Nog]

This, in turn, reminded me of the peculiar fact that the Dutch language knows no distinction between the term "nephew" and the term "cousin", which I've always found a bit flabbergasting considering that the relationship between cousins tends to be of a rather different nature than that between uncle and nephew, for most people.

I generally refer to my extended relations of close age as "cousins" and ones who are older than me as "aunt/uncle", entirely disregarding the ways they're actually related.

[alex]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually, and is more or less what I do, too.

And Arlo, that would be outstanding!

[ellaguru]

There is a surprising number of dead bees under my dining table. I mean, I'm aware that part of the explanation for this is the irregular (at best) sweeping on my part. But still, the percentage of sweepables under my dining table that is composed of dead bees is surprising.

[peacocks]

I like the word "sweepables"

Yeah I just call my cousin's daughter my cousin's daughter. When she's super old I'll probably just call her my regular old cousin. If I ever have kids I wonder what they will call each other? Probably cousins.

[alex]

I had that with bumblebees last summer, or maybe the year before. Rather mysterious! My ex-housemate also mentioned that there were bumblebees suddenly appearing in her room even when the window had been closed for days.

These days, I just find a lot of living moths.

Still on the topic of words for family members, I have just learned that in Dutch you cannot just keep piling on the "great"s in order to denote how many generations someone was removed from your grandparents. Instead, each generation gets its own prefix, which leads to wonderful constructions such as "betovergrootouder" (great great grandfather), or even "edelstambetovergrootouder" (that's 29 generations from me, apparently!), or, yes, "hoogopperaartsvooredelstamoudbetovergrootouder" (that's 513 generations before me). How cool is that?

[jm]

This, in turn, reminded me of the peculiar fact that the Dutch language knows no distinction between the term "nephew" and the term "cousin", which I've always found a bit flabbergasting considering that the relationship between cousins tends to be of a rather different nature than that between uncle and nephew, for most people.

I generally refer to my extended relations of close age as "cousins" and ones who are older than me as "aunt/uncle", entirely disregarding the ways they're actually related.

This is what I've always done.  I recently had to explain, in regard to my "uncle" golfing with Alice Cooper, not why my "uncle" was golfing with Alice Cooper, but why I was saying "uncle" like that.

Still on the topic of words for family members, I have just learned that in Dutch you cannot just keep piling on the "great"s in order to denote how many generations someone was removed from your grandparents. Instead, each generation gets its own prefix, which leads to wonderful constructions such as "betovergrootouder" (great great grandfather), or even "edelstambetovergrootouder" (that's 29 generations from me, apparently!), or, yes, "hoogopperaartsvooredelstamoudbetovergrootouder" (that's 513 generations before me). How cool is that?

That is awesome!

[G.C.R]

I also very much like "aunt-sayer" and "uncle-sayer".

[Thermofusion]

I generally refer to my extended relations of close age as "cousins" and ones who are older than me as "aunt/uncle", entirely disregarding the ways they're actually related.

This is exactly what the younger folk in my extended family do. Meanwhile the older folk take weird pride in knowing how every single damn person is related to everyone else ("Janice is Bob's third cousin twice removed" etc)

[FreddyKnuckles]

I am telling you, the table of consanguinity in my Wills, Trusts and Estates book was by far the most useful thing I learned in law school.

Oh, so that's what a second cousin removed is!

[Anne the Man]

I had to send in a couple sentences about myself for a newsletter in which a gig I am doing is being advertised. The sentences run thusly:

Anne has sung in various choirs and musical groups over many years, including the Wellington Youth Choir. She plays guitar and piano and likes tinkering with whatever other musical instruments are lying around. Her voice has the purity of morning dew on a fresh summer's day!

I didn't add the last sentence ahh pressure

[Ignatius]

Don't worry it turns out dew is kinda gross as it is almost always attached to plants and soil. Pressure relieved! Now go out and show 'em the voice is as clean and bright as a mountain spring!

[Thermofusion]

Anne's voice leaves me feeling smooth and hydrated after a long hard day

[G.C.R]

Continued here