Feud for thought

February 5, 2004

Let's pretend for a moment, for the sake of a nifty segue and the argument that follows it, that Eskimos do indeed have many precise words for snow because they are steeped in it — literally.

By the same token, then, it must mean something that the Swedish language has many more precise words for defining family relationships than does English. I've only just now realized this, because I myself have always been tone deaf when it comes to such words. This is something that I blame on my Dutch, by the way: That language is even less precise than English on this matter, since both nephews/nieces and cousins are called neven/nichten [Dutch].

In Swedish, the exact term for nephew/niece depends not just on the sex of the person in question, but also on the sex of the parent related to you. So the son of your brother is brorson, that of your sister systerson — and then there is brorsdotter and systerdotter for any nieces you might have.

This same logic applies to grandparents. With far meaning father and mor meaning mother, the four possible combinations are farfar, mormor, farmor and morfar. Unfortunately, this is farmor complicated than I can handle because I can never remember if the first bit begets the second or vice versaIt turns out the second bit begets the first.. But it gets farfar worse: Great grandparents also have precise definitions: quickly now, there's farfars far, farfars mor, farmors far, farmors mor, morfars far, morfars mor, mormors far, and finally, mormors mor, who recently was eulogized in this Kylie Minogue song (iTunes URL). Do you even know the names of any of your great grandparents?

Some Swedish words are too good to be kept by Swedes all to themselves and should be adopted by anglophiles immediately. In English, for example, "stepmother" is far too monolithic a notion: Swedes understand there can be bad, neutral and good step parents, and have dignified each with a proper term. There is styvmor, the kind that Cinderella had; plastmamma — literally, plastic mother — which is neutral; and finally, the wonderful bonusmamma, which means exactly what you think it does.

Now, why do the Swedes have so many words for relatives? Because they are dysfunctional socialists intent on banishing the family? Or because family is so important that each relationship is lovingly given due recognition? Or maybe because it facilitates keeping track of the score in Strindbergian family feuds? My guess is that the truth lies somewhere between options two and three.

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