Lesson Seventeen: Who's Who In The Family? (Part One)

I hope you all had a chance to thoroughly study the last two lessons because now we are moving onto a new small series of study.

With this we will be going a little bit into close family and names to call them.

妹妹 ( Mei4  Mei5 )

弟弟 ( Di4   Di5 )

姐姐 ( Jie3  Jie5 )

哥哥 ( Ge1   Ge5 )

媽媽 ( Ma1  Ma5 )

爸爸 ( Ba4  Ba5 )

Well us start with the top of the list and work our way down.

妹妹 ( Mei4 Mei5 ) ( it means Younger Sister. )

Now for  弟弟 ( Di4  Di5 )  ( it means Younger Brother. )

Now I know you may not think of these important stepping stones in your road to literacy in Chinese. However, these are very important especially in Taiwan, because if your spouse has any sisters or brothers rather older or younger than you, you still need to call them according to your spouses relationship with them.

Example: Bob is 37 and married Jenny who is 29, but Jenny has a older sister who is 32. Now in this situation bob would still need to call Jenny's sister "Older Sister" according to Taiwanese tradition, even though he is clearly older than her.

Well that is all of the food for thought today see you all next on Zhongwen Study 中文學習。