The next pages talk about family relationships in Korean. In English, things are relatively easy. We talk about brothers and sisters as pretty much generic terms. We don’t care whether the sibling is older or younger, or whether it’s a boy’s or girl’s sibling. A family tree diagram can fit conveniently on a single page.
In Korean, though, these things do make a difference, and it’s reflected in the language, giving far more significant relationships than there are in English. Trying to draw it all on one page would produce something that looked like an organization chart for a major multinational corporation.
So, to spare me (the “artist”) a great deal of angst and to spare you (the reader) massive head trauma, let’s start with a picture of the “direct relationships” in a family.
Main Index