Counting cousins - Wordsmith.org

The English cousin system takes a little getting used to, but is quite straightforward: first cousins share a pair of grandparents, second cousins share great-grandparents and so on. Then, your first cousin's child is your first cousin once removed, his/her grandchild is first cousin twice removed, etc., the number of removals being the number of generations that separate you. The combination of the two numbers pinpoints a location on the family tree like a knight's move: across and then down.

Irish is quite different:
col ceathrar (4) -> first cousin
col c�igir (5) -> first cousin once removed
col seisir (6) -> second cousin
col seachtair (7) -> second cousin once removed
col ochtair (8) -> third cousin

Now, "col" means "taboo", "incest", "prohibition", "repugnance", "impediment to marriage". And "ceathrar", "c�igear", "seisear", "seachtar" and "ochtar" mean 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 (in the form used for counting people).

So literally, in Irish, your first cousin is your "incest to the fourth degree", your second cousin "to the sixth degree" and so on. (Needless to say, we don't think of this when we use the words!)

It makes a kind of logical sense, except for being so very explicit and legalistic, and for the fact that cousin marriage is not really a taboo in Ireland, even for first cousins, let alone third! I wonder if the pattern continues for fourth and subsequent cousins?

in the form used for counting people

All right! Fess up. How many forms are there for counting things? Is this another kind of gender?

Great post, Hibernicus! Your analogy to a knight's move has made me understand the nomenclature for the first time after struggling with it several times over the years!

It's fascinating that the "taboo" sense remains in the language even though it is absent from the culture, but I wonder what the first three "degrees of taboo" are. Siblings and parents/children would be 1 and 2, I assume, but what's #3? Grandparents?

is there something about the irish, that we know this (first cousin, second cousins and removed ..)?

i learned these relationships as a child (but then, one of my father's first cousins was grandmother to kids my age--they were my second cousins, once removed, i was a first cousin once removed to their grandmother)

thanks though for the names..

(curiosly, this is something my parent knew in gaelic, (but they were not/are not speakers, and knew only a very little that they had learned in school--which meant mostly prayers and curse words--though when we encounted a word, my mother knew the phonics, and remembered some of the grammer) since they had to think, and translate the relationships into english)

How many forms are there for counting things?

Exactly two, you'll be glad to hear, one for people, viz.:
duine
beirt
tri�r
ceathrar
c�igear
seisear
seachtar
ochtar
naon�r
deichni�r;

and one for everything else:
aon
d�
tr�
ceathar
c�ig
s�
seacht
ocht
naoi
deich

You can see that from 3 up, the two forms are related.

I wonder what the first three "degrees of taboo" are

Let's see if we can figure it out!

The Irish system has degree n for ((n-2)/2)th cousin (for even values of n) and ((n-3)/2)th cousin once removed (for odd values of n).

The English system has nth cousin for latest common ancestor of (n+1) generations ago.

So, Irish *col beirt (2) would be zeroth cousin, which would mean parents as common ancestors, therefore it would be your siblings.
*Col tri�r (3) would be zeroth cousin once removed, i.e., your siblings children, namely nephews/nieces.
*Col duine (1) is a slightly tricky one - your (minus one)th cousin once removed, which works out as your own children.

is there something about the irish, that we know this (first cousin, second cousins and removed ..)?

I really do think so. In the case of my family, I know many of my quite distant relatives (third cousins, 2C2R, 2C1R) which would be unusual in the US. In the US people are more mobile, often moving far from their parents' home on reaching adulthood, and losing contact with all but their immediate family. Here, at a family celebration or a funeral, if the "focus" of the event is an elderly person, and 1st cousins are represented in that generation, the younger generation can be up to third (or greater) cousins.

In reply to:
Here, at a family celebration or a funeral, if the "focus" of the event is an elderly person, and 1st cousins are represented in that generation, the younger generation can be up to third (or greater) cousins.

This situation is routine here in Zild, among Maaori and Pacific Islanders, but they all tend to use just "cousin" for any relation not an ancestor, sibling, uncle or aunt. Great-uncles etc., are most likely to be called "cousins", and the concept of degrees of cousinship seems alien to them. More than that, they don't care about such intricacies. "If you're kin, you're a cuz", and that's all that matters.

I know quite a few of my cousins (1C, 1C1R, 2C, 2C1R). Unless somebody asks me for the exact relationship, I tend to call them all cousins. Since not many people know the system for the rules of consanguinity, I usually describe somebody by a circumlocution like my father's cousin's son or some such. (There's a Danish branch to my family, and their terms depend on whether the cousin is female or male: kusine, fætter.)

Kinship terms are much studied in anthropology and linguistics. The interesting thing about IE kinship terms is that we cannot reconstruct a term for the proto-language (PIE) for cousin. All the daughter languages take a different approach.

I also looked into Irish col 'taboo, prohibition' which is interesting in its own right. Not an agreed upon etymology for the word. Vendryes suggests in his Old Irish etymological dictionary that it may be congate with Old Norse skyldr 'necessary, bounden'. There's also no reconstructed root for 'taboo' in PIE (which makes sense), though Cal Watkins has put one forward in the Umbrian sopa from the Iguvine Tables. A really cool thread, Hib, thanks for starting it.

Not all languages use the same set of numbers for all objects, e.g., Japanese has different numbers to use with people versus objects (like Irish). They also have something called quantifiers that are used with numbers, sort of like how we say in English, two pieces of paper. In Japanese, you say something like five round-things-quantifier balls, two human-quantifier people, etc. Ain't language grand?

In Japanese, you say something like five round-things-quantifier balls, two human-quantifier people, etc.

I was thinking of this example when asked how many counting systems there are in Irish. But Japanese has two systems also.
A. Chinese reading
1. ichi
2. ni
3. san
4. shi ("yon" is used because "shi" sounds like death)
5. go
6. roku
7. shichi (pron "nana"; see 4 above)
8. hachi
9. kyu
10. juu

These are combined with count-words like "hon", "nin", "mai", "hiki" or whatever, depending on what's being counted. E.g. sambiki no kobuta - the 3 little pigs.

B. Japanese reading:
1. hitotsu
2. futatsu
3. mittsu
4. yottsu
5. itsutsu
6. muttsu
7. nanatsu
8. yattsu
9. kokonotsu
10. too

These are used without any count-words; e.g. kobuta ga mittsu - (there are) 3 little pigs.

Thanks, Hib. In English, we have issei, nisei, sansei, and yonsei for first, second, third, and fourth generation Japanese-Americans. Thought the Japanese count one from the original immigrant, issei, whereas in English we count from the first native-born.

Let's see if we can figure it out!

Well done! I never would have thought of casting it as a function. Can you give me a phonetic pronunciation of "col duine"?

In reply to:
In Japanese, you say something like five round-things-quantifier balls, two human-quantifier people, etc.

Indonesian has the same thing.

the most common ones are:

orang for humans (literally person) tiga orang anak = three children
ekor for animals (literally tail) tiga ekor singa = three lions
helai for flat things tiga helai kertas = three sheets of paper
buah for everything else(literally fruit) tiga buah mobil = three cars

There are lots more (like batang (literally stalk) for plants) but they're not used so much nowadays except in very literary or old-fashioned Indonesian. Notice that if you have a number you don't need a plural in Indonesian. Mobil-mobil = cars; tiga buah mobil = three cars.

Bingley

Can you give me a phonetic pronunciation of "col duine"?

It's not a real word in Irish, so not a very useful thing to know how to say!

But I can try to describe it: "col" is pronounced something like I would say the English word "cull" - /kVl/. "Duine" (meaning "person") is pronounced a bit like a British person would say "dinner" (with no "r" sound) - /dIn@/.

Now, to be more exact:
consonants in Irish have a "broad" and a "slender" pronunciation depending on context. The slender version is palatalised and occurs if the consonant is preceded by or followed by "e" or "i". Otherwise it is broad.

In "duine", the n is slender. This means its sound tends somewhat towards Spanish �. Furthermore, the "d" is not clear and crisp like an English [d], but is softer, about halfway between /d/ and /D/.