Relative Age
Some languages, such as Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Sinhalese, Chinese (see Chinese kinship), Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Nepalese add another dimension to some relations: relative age. Rather than one term for "brother", there exist, for example, different words for "older brother" and "younger brother". In Tamil, an older male sibling is referred to as Annan and a younger male sibling as Thambi, whereas older and younger female siblings are called Akka and Thangai respectively.
Read more about this topic: Kinship Terminology
Famous quotes containing the words relative and/or age:
“Excellence or virtue is a settled disposition of the mind that determines our choice of actions and emotions and consists essentially in observing the mean relative to us ... a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime—I’m referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It’s extremely painful. I agree that it’s hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It’s no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.”
—Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (1873–1954)