Family relationships in Swedish

My grandparents all died far too early. But as a child I had two lovely grandmas, and I often took the train with my mother or older sister to go and visit them. I really enjoyed seeing them and have learned a lot from them. One grandma was called “Oma Stuttgart”, which is the German word for granny and the city where she lived (Stuttgart), as that was an easy distinction between the two for baby Mario
The other grandma was called “Oma Käthe” – well otherwise kids don’t get the difference between grandma and grandma.

This is much simpler for the Swedes. They actually have two words for grandma: “farmor” and “mormor”, something like “mumsmum” and “dadsmum”. So “Oma Stuttgart” was my dad’s mum, my farmor

This is pretty clever and actually works like that for most of the family relationships. There is four words for “grandchild” (which is “barnbarn”, a “kids’kid”), two for grandsons and two for granddaughters:

• dotterson, the daughter of your son the son of your daughter
• sonson, the son of your son
• dotterdotter :-), is the daughter of your daughter
• sondotter, obviously the son of your daughter well the daughter of your son

Maybe a bit confusing for those who want to learn Swedish, but it’s a great system isn’t it?

If you don’t sit next to a nice Swede like Martin (I do), you can learn more Swedish family vocabulary here.

Posted by onkel-mario in Family, Internationalization, Team | Trackback |