MWW 10: дүү

Cyrillic	дүү
Transcription	düü
IPA	[tʉ:]
Layman’s Pronunciation	DOOH
Translation	younger sibling; younger
In Genghis Khan’s time it was degüü.

By my calculations I owe you three words of the week. Continuing with the theme of words that make distinctions English doesn’t, this day’s (week’s?) word is дүү.

There’s probably no better word to begin talking about the differences between traditional Mongolian and English-speaking families. Дүү does not correspond in a one-way relationship to any English word for a relative, because it can refer to either a younger brother, or a younger sister. Mongolian does not have separate words for them. However, it never refers to an older brother (ах) or an older sister (эгч). Basically, дүү is a word that classifies relatives by their age, not their gender.

Of course Mongolians can be specific if they want. If they want to be more specific they can call a younger brother эрэгтэй дүү or бүстэй дүү and call a younger sister эмэгтэй дүү or бүсгүй дүү. English speakers can also add “younger” or “older” to the words “brother” or “sister” if they want to talk about how old they are. The point is that English speakers have to specify gender when they talk about siblings, but they don’t have to specify age, and that Mongolians have to specify age, but they don’t have to specify gender (at least for younger siblings).

This is part of a bigger pattern. English words for relatives usually indicate the gender of the relative (except “cousin”). They don’t distinguish the ages of people in the same generation. Mongolians words for relatives don’t always distinguish the gender of the relative, but many of them distinguish whether relatives in the same generation are older or younger. For example, in addition to the words for siblings, Mongolian also has different words for one’s aunts and uncles, depending on whether they’re older or younger than one’s mother or father.

Perhaps in Mongolian culture age is just a bigger deal than it is in America. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that older children often participate in the family’s work, including acting as a caretaker for younger children. Children of different ages really aren’t considered the same or equal. I do know that in my сум (county), children of rural nomadic families usually have to live in a dormitory during the school year. Students are grouped in dorm rooms primarily by who is related to whom. For most of the year school children don’t live with their parents, but they do live with their older brothers and sisters, who are then responsible for their дүү нар (that’s the plural of дүү). Of course this doesn’t apply to the hundreds of years before Mongolians had primary-school education. I don’t really know the reason, but I do know there is some deeply ingrained social reason that Mongolians feel that the age of relatives is essential information, but Anglophones don’t.

She’s дүү-er than me

Дүү refers to age in a more general sense because people use it to talk about who’s older or younger, even when they aren’t related to each other. To say that someone is younger than you, you would say something like,

Тэр надаас дөрвөн нас дүү.

She-NOMINATIVE me.ABLATIVE four year younger-sibling

“She is four years younger than me.”

using the word for younger sibling. It could be rendered into English as “She is my younger sister by four years,” but “she” doesn’t have to be related to the speaker at all in order to say this. Here, it simply means, “She is four years younger than me.”

Confusion

If the different way of talking about relatives confuses you, don’t worry, it confuses Mongolians too. Mongolian schoolchildren seem to have been taught that English “brother” is equivalent to Mongolian ах (older brother) and English “sister” is equivalent to Mongolian эгч (older sister). They also know that “younger brother” and “younger sister” both mean дүү. However, it’s never pointed out that Mongolian and Western notions of family are different, or how. Many of them don’t realize that “younger” is a separate word that describes “brother” or “sister” and is completely optional. This means that whenever I talk to Mongolians, they almost always tell me that a younger brother is a “younger brother.” For the rest of the conversation, they will continue to use the full phrase “younger brother,” even though I knew long ago that he was younger.

In fact, many of them don’t realize that a “younger brother” is still a kind of brother and that a “younger sister” is still a kind of sister. This means that (no joke) I have also had conversations like this:

Me:                  Do you have a brother?

Student:            No, I do not have a brother. But I have two younger brothers.

Me:                  ???

I really think these kids need to learn more about culture, not just memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules.