Family Trees in Other Languages: our world's 7 kinship systems

Not every language talks about family the same way. Why did Latin have so many words for "cousin"? When does "brother" also mean "sister" in Hawaiian? How did Ashanti kin terms thwart British colonizers? An animated exploration of kinship around the world!

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~ Corrections ~
One messenger warns that the "Inuit" system does not actually reflect Inuit languages. For more information and multiple sources on this issue, see my sources doc link below.

~ Briefly ~ (small spoilers!)

We'll take a tour through the traditional breakdown of kin terms around the world into just six systems: Inuit, Hawaiian, Sudanese, Iroquois, Crow and Omaha. Along the way we'll see how each works using my animated family tree diagram full of faces. We'll also meet some truly unique examples of kinship systems, including spending a bit more time with siblings in Hawaiian language itself and a detour to the Asantehene's kingdom to show off how Crow systems work. Wait, but that's just six systems, right? There's one more, a system that looks like Iroquois until we zoom out and meet your grandparents' siblings' descendants.

You'll end up with a dizzying but amazing sense for how linguistic kinship systems have been classified in the past. Before you go though, I'll ask a few questions that poke at these systems, challenge the assumptions we make in this video and have been hard for me to answer.

~ Credits ~

Art, animation, narration and some of the music by Josh from NativLang

Doc full of sources for claims made and images, music, sfx, fonts used:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u...

Music that's not by me:

Crazy Glue, Tickled Pink
Josh Woodward - http://joshwoodward.com/

Thatched Villagers, Thinking Music, The Path of the Goblin King v2, Silver Flame, Arid Foothills, Vadodora Chill Mix, Sardana
Kevin MacLeod - https://www.incompetech.com

Happy Ukulele, Sneaky Snooper
Jason Shaw - https://audionautix.com

Dragons and Fireworks
Darren Curtis - https://www.darrencurtismusic.com