I am often intrigued by how widespread a lot of extended and even non-extended families are, and it’s fascinating to think of family members coming from different places to visit each other and having family gatherings with a bunch of different accents. What countries do you have known family members in?
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I have a sister in US, a cousin in Germany.
To my knowledge, all my family is American and reside here.
Germany, Bahrain, Belgium, France, and Qatar.
I actually wanna move to Belgium one day, so it’s nice that I can get some help and advice from a family member whenever I need it.
Germany, Switzerland, Romania, Norway, France, Spain, Austria, and USA
how do people have so much family? I have like 10 family members that I know, and see once a year. they all live in my country aswell.
Well, each of my parents has 5 siblings who all had kids, so I have 2 siblings who have significant others and 2 kids each, and 17 1st cousins on my mom’s side and 14 on my dad’s side, many of whom now have their own children (I think we’re at 18 or 19 now, but I don’t facebook, so it could be over 20), plus the 12 uncles and aunts, and then there are the in-laws who have a less tidy structure, with 4 parents, 1 full sibling with 4 kids and 2 step-kids and 3 grand kids, 2 half siblings with 2 kids and a step kid, and 2 step siblings with 3 kids. And her mom had 4 siblings…
The big reunions I remember as a kid (for my great grandparent’s families) were well over 100 people. Because they all had 4-6 kids because that’s how you ran a family farm.
wow! that is crazy! i always dreamed of huge reuinions, but From peoples stories i feel like they arent as amazingas i assume
Hah, can confirm that they aren’t amazing. Or at least mine isn’t. Let’s just say I sent video of one cousin at the capitol on Jan 6 to the FBI.
Sweden, France, Canada, Czech republic ,UK , USA and just yesterday one of cousin moved to India out of all.places
Canada, USA, Paraguay, Germany. For a while, Brazil, Columbia, The Netherlands, and The Cayman Islands were on that list, too.
I’m in Philly
Some are in NYC, USA
Many are throughout Guangdong Province, PRC
Not sure if this is accents but: Cantonese and Taishanese (台山, not 泰山) are mutually intelligible, but sounds a little different. Cantonese have 6 tones, Taishanese has 9 tones (compare to the 4 in Mandarin).
We don’t use Mandarin unless its with other non-Cantonese that are from China. Mandarin is just something that the government just started forcing. Think of like the Native Americans and the European colonizers forcing to learn a different language. Except this case, the colonizers are just a bit to the north on the same continent.
Similarly, we don’t use English unless its with people that speak none of the above mentioned languages.
Thanks for sending me on the deep dive on 粤语, 广东话，台山话 and finding out about 粤海, and the ambiguity in the meaning of Cantonese.
Edit: what language would you prefer to use with someone who spoke both Mandarin and English fluently as second languages?
For my family its
- Taishanese
- Cantonese (Although they usually mix words from Taishanese because its very similar)
- Mandarin
- Very broken english (but good enough to pass the US citizenship test)
For me it’s:
- English (not broken like my mother’s 😅, my classmates say I don’t even have an accent)
- Cantonese
- Mandarin
- Taisanese, but its mutually intelligible with Cantonese anyways 🤷♂️
Like I conaider Mandarin and Cantonese separate languages (although CCP loves to call Cantonese a “dialect” to erase local cultures), but since Cantonese and Taishanese are so similar, I guess you can call Taishanese a dialect of Cantonese (although I’m no language expert)
Like I grew up in the US, 90% people I talk to are in the US. When I’m at home, the language is cantonese.
Like there are less than 1% of the time I use Mandarin. I feel like 90% of the Chinese diaspora in the US is Cantonese (GuangZhou has a history of immigration to the US. I heard about the California gold rush and their recriment of chinese laborers, that’s probably when the Chinatowns were established.)
You’re right in saying 汉语 and 粤语 are different.
But then, when I lived in China I had teachers tell me Japanese and Korean were really dialects of Chinese because they used to be written with 汉字… 🙄 Imperialism gonna imperial…
Though due to that cultural imperialism lots of Cantonese’s unique vocabulary is being replaced by the Chinese equivalent, and even the grammar is changing to fit more closely. =(Various 粤语 speech is still just about the norm in the UK amongst the Chinese diaspora, though more the 粤海 variant of Hong Kong, due to our own imperialist history. But that is changing with more recent waves of PRC migrants.
Austria Serbia Greece Romania Turkey Egypt Algeria Iraq Bulgaria Romania
Only Canada.
- The UK
- The Netherlands
- Germany
- Ireland
- New Zealand
- The USA
- Canada
- The People’s Republic of China
- Chile
- The Republic of China
That’s quite a few places.
Bosnia and Poland. Im from germany
Close family: Norway, England, Jamaica, South Africa
Extended family: Sweden and GermanyFor me, it’s New Zealand, America, France, and the UK.
Literally every family member I know of (including very extended family) lives in the USA. The vast, vast majority all live in Ohio.
We did talk about how my grandma’s grandchildren all live rather far away from her. Her sisters on the other hand…pretty much all their grandchildren live like a 10 minute drive away. Somehow we got the gumption to move away from the rural area we were from. They did not.
US, Canada, and Denmark, though my brother was stationed in Korea for a couple years as well
