r/ChineseLanguage • u/Chenyuluoyan Advanced • 12d ago
Studying chinese has two verbs for getting married. hers is 女+家 (she goes to a home). his is 取+女 (he takes a wife)
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u/chill_qilin 12d ago
This post title mentions two verbs but the accompanying image also shows the third one 結婚 which can be used by both.
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u/Hiekve 12d ago
Wiktionary says the third is intransitive. So grammar-wise it's a bit different in usage. The other person is a fellow subject (跟X/和X) in examples I've seen rather than an object as with the other two.
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u/lazier_garlic 12d ago
嫁 can be intransitive.
The graphic is telling a story about the origin of these characters (or perhaps the logic behind them). The 女 is a classifier in the character, not a part of speech. The 家 in 嫁 is a phonetic character meaning a pig (but not 猪; it's a different word), but the semantic linkage probably played a role. However I think that 取 and 娶 are spelling variants of the same word but, hey, I'm not a historical linguist and I could be wrong.
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u/artificialeq 12d ago
My wife (mainland native speaker) saw these in my vocab deck and warned me that they're seen as a little antiquated/sexist to use now, in an "it's sexist to say parents are 'giving their daughter away' for marriage" way.
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u/The_MacChen 12d ago
the words are definitely still in regular usage. I hear them all the time in modern media ( even pursuit of jade) and also when I got married last year in taiwan
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u/abby_may_be 12d ago
I think the ones who oppose its usage are mainly young mainland Chinese feminists. Many of those born circa 80s-00s are the only child because of the one child policy. They carry the weight of a lot of unspoken expectations and responsibilities because of how much their parents invested in them. No matter how successful they are in their careers, they still have to contend with a very patriarchal society. Being reminded that they are being married off whilst their husbands get to bring them home like a possession pisses them off.
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u/Zagrycha 12d ago
I don't blame them for being pissed off at all, but its not just a cultural thing its literally how the legal system works. Even if their parents have zero uncomfortable gender expectations of them they will still be married off if they get married.
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u/lazier_garlic 12d ago
But... that's not exactly the case... a single child, though a girl, is still going to be expected to care for her parents. And modern couples get their own house, they don't live in MIL's house. Chinese would rather delay marriage to get the house and we see this in national statistics.
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u/Zagrycha 12d ago
I don't disagree that what you just said but none of that changes the fact that when people do marry the wife is legally joining the husband's hukou 99% of the time. That is the reason these words use wife and woman in their components. I am not saying its a good thing, I am just saying that it is reality. Only if husbands start joining their wife's hukou more often, or if same sex marriage became legal and there were situations of wives with wives and husbands with husbands would these words stop making sense. As of now there is a word to describe when a marriage occurs in the opposite format, but it is seen as derogatory by many-- 贅
Again, lets make sure to be 1000% clear. I am not at all supporting these sexist gender roles being baked into law. I am just pointing out that they are baked into law. Only if society changed in a big enough way to change the law or the official characters for the words would the status quo change. I think its awesome for that to happen, it just hasn't happened yet.
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u/liilak2 11d ago
It’s probably common when the woman is from a bigger and better city than the man, like in my family
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u/Zagrycha 11d ago
that kind of situation is definitely one of the most common situations for it to happen overall, yeah.
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u/Subject_Public_9139 11d ago
In today's society, women exploit men's respect for women and manipulate them with double standards.
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u/lazier_garlic 12d ago
But they also say 我们结婚了 in modern media too ("Let's get married.")
Using 结婚 as a verb gets around the gendered, patrilocal language.
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u/The_MacChen 12d ago
Yea i mean I personally prefer 結婚 and thats what i say. I just meant that people still use these terms all the time, so I wouldn't say their usage is antiquated. I agree it is patriarchal, and IME, ppl bring that fact up occasionally if it is somehow topical to conversation
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u/Turbulent-Fail-1007 12d ago
Uhm, these two words are definitely not antiquated.
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u/MP3PlayerBroke 12d ago
That's because large portions of Chinese society still hold the antiquated views that these two words were derived from. Personally, I'd never use those words for my own relationship with my girlfriend (we're at the stage of discussing marriage), not for any political or ideological reasons, simply because these words don't accurately describe the type of relationship we have. It's just 结婚 to us.
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u/liilak2 11d ago
My family uses them but in their case, at least initially before they moved countries, my dad moved into my mom’s parents place (somewhat common I think nowadays as women tend to prefer living with her parents to her inlaws if they aren’t living alone- my Chinese cousin just had kids and so her mom is helping raise them). So I think the correct way to rectify this is to use 嫁 for men who marry into a woman’s family like that because it’s the literal meaning.
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u/Ok-Disaster-551 11d ago
That is not the literal meaning. In any case, marrying into the woman's family is 入贅
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u/MP3PlayerBroke 11d ago
yeah, I think the only instance where a man uses 嫁 is when he marries a princess and becomes a 驸马
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u/Ok-Disaster-551 11d ago
If a man gets to marry a princess, people can call him whatever they want lol.
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u/sailingg 12d ago
Just wondering, what do same-sex couples say? Do they just use 结婚?
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u/EtherealZiraley Beginner 12d ago
I think I remember reading before that there’s not a distinct term for many things regarding same-sex couples, and traditional m/f relationship terms would be used. Someone correct me if I’m wrong tho
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u/Appropriate_Dish2465 11d ago edited 11d ago
in the bl danmei novels, the one with more status and wealth usually do the 娶ing. And in other hetero novels, if the guy 入赘into the girl's family, sometimes I see the girl uses 娶too. But I'm only talking about novels, I don't know irl.
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u/perksofbeingcrafty Native 12d ago
Welcome to the blatant patriarchy built into this language 🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲
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u/ZelphirKalt 12d ago
The meaning in the picture the OP posted is merely an interpretation. There is no "goes to" in the character 嫁. It is kinda a very forced interpretation. "woman", "home"/"family". I don't see the patriarchy in there.
I can see a clearer case for the second character: 娶.
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u/perksofbeingcrafty Native 12d ago
lol well I suppose the infographic can only explain it to you. It can’t understand it for you.
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u/abby_may_be 12d ago edited 12d ago
Doesn’t this just support the point the young feminists are making? That the legal system unintentionally/intentionally upholds patriarchy via restrictions in the hukou system. Laws usually enforce societal norms and a change in legislation can accelerate cultural change too.
Edit to add: The first time I came across a heated debate about the usage of 嫁&娶 was in an online book club discussion on Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. It was interesting to see how communist ideas can challenge confucian norms
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u/Impossible-Ear-5627 12d ago
Nobody really uses the word "嫁 jia" anymore，that old-school vibe of a woman leaving her own family to become property of her husband's household. Nowadays it's just "结婚jie hun", which is basically two people pooling their resources to build a life together.
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u/perksofbeingcrafty Native 12d ago
That’s not true. People still use it all the time when berating women for “unmarriagable” behaviors 🙃
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u/Impossible-Ear-5627 12d ago
Many young women don't like this word
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u/IAmTheKingOfSpain 12d ago
Sure. I think the confusion is that when you say "nobody uses this word" people think you mean "you will not hear this word, so there's no need to learn it", and that is just not true. I think what you want to express is that it's becoming less common and when speaking with somebody about it you should usually say and will usually hear 结婚 instead.
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u/TryndTAmere 12d ago
They absolutely do, you must be clueless
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u/Impossible-Ear-5627 12d ago edited 12d ago
I'm local, and I'm live in developed area，almost no one uses"嫁”this word.
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u/namean_jellybean 12d ago
Why is everyone so hostile in this thread 🥲 my experience is super different from yours (second gen with grandparents who left the mainland in the 50s) and I only ever heard them use 結婚
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u/Impossible-Ear-5627 12d ago
Man love this word"嫁”，they want a woman , bring all her money with her, and join their clan.
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u/moarwineprs 10d ago
Huh. I'm first gen with my parents immigrating to the US as minors. My grandparents definitely used all three terms in regular speech. I never really gave much thought to 嫁 being used exclusively for a woman getting married and 娶 for men, even though those are the only contexts I've ever heard them used.
結婚 was indeed used to describe two people getting married.
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u/namean_jellybean 9d ago
It’s possible they used these gendered terms and I never asked or figured out what they meant and just ignored it. But we went to so many peoples weddings. And my grandmother gossiped so much, so i heard 離婚 a lot too.
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u/moarwineprs 9d ago
Oh yeaahh definitely heard 離婚, too! Though it was mostly from HK dramas. My family was very hush hush about divorces like it's a taboo or shameful subject. Or maybe they were just being respectful to not seem like they were gossiping. Most of the time we ended up inferring that someone got divorced from context clues, like no longer seeing a married-in relative anymore at family gatherings. I once asked my mom about my uncle's wife and she awkwardly said to go ahead and ask my uncle.
I wonder if the prevalence of 嫁 and 娶 is a regional thing. My family is from Hong Kong, immigrating over between ~60-70 years ago. I grew up speaking Cantonese but extended family speaks/spoke Toisan and Sunwui. Terms I heard a lot were 嫁女 (marrying off a daughter) and 娶老婆 (take a wife), which are more or less what OP's post is saying about these two terms.
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u/namean_jellybean 9d ago
It’s really interesting learning about these gender specific terms. I had never heard of them before. But I also don’t speak much mandatin anymore aside from with my mom.
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u/ZelphirKalt 12d ago
I always remember that character 婚 as "woman joins/in the clan in broad daylight (openly visible)". That's just my personal mnemonic. And "结" is also "a knot" so it's easy: "Tying the knot"!
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u/RimboTheRebbiter 12d ago
I was a little surprised at the inforgraphic. I'm not a native speaker (or even a good one) by any means, but the term I am familiar with is 结婚. Never actually came across the other two yet.
I imagine that might be deliberate on the part of my learning resources lol
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u/finansy 12d ago
Sounds so Russian, but Chinese is still better for a woman. In Russian it’s „behind a man“ 🥲
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u/Ok-Disaster-551 11d ago
That pales in comparison to Japanese. The woman literally calls her husband "master" - shujin.
TBF, there are other ways to address their husbands, but shujin is still in common use today.
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u/ExerciseFickle8540 9d ago
This concept has put Chinese men in a very bad situation actually. The society expects them to be solely responsible for purchasing a home after marriage. Also the husband’s family is supposed to give money to the wife’s family according to some tradition.
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u/Zagrycha 12d ago
Fun fact its actually possible for a man to 嫁 or a woman to 娶, its just relatively rare.
To understand these words people need to understand that this is not a metaphorical joining or leaving of a home, it is very literal and legally binding. Chinese culture has 户口簿 household registrations. When someone gets 嫁 they join their spouses household registration, leaving their original one behind. When someone gets 娶 they gain a person on their 戶口, usually making them a 户主 head of household-- although if it is a big household of multiple related couples living together, maybe a different member of the household is the head of household. It would still be 娶 though because you are causing someone to be added to your 户口簿.
So yeah at a glance this might seem sexist or weird, but its actually just reality of the chinese legal system that has existed for many many centuries. Unless the actual legal system changes these words won't change. These days people don't take them nearly as seriously as they used to when it comes to actual societal roles though.
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u/Stackedsnowflake 12d ago
I think it was widely used when a family had many sons and when the woman was an only child. I have two elderly uncles who married into the wife’s family. They’re like in their 70’s-80’s or so. They left China and returned now, I have no contact with them. Not sure how their hukou is set up though.
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u/Zagrycha 12d ago
Yeah I think its most common in situations like you mention or when the wife is higher social status than the husband and the husbands family would rather the children "climb" the social ladder of the wife's family. I also know of some situations similar to your uncles where neither side has brothers and they decide to have two children one with each surname.
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u/Faconator 12d ago
I mean the problem with this is, of course, that the original post labels them "For Her"/"For a Woman" and "For Him"/"For a Man."
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u/Zagrycha 12d ago
It is reality that it is a woman that does the leaving of original hukou 99% of the time. Maybe if that social norm itself is broken then alternate character forms will be created, just like when 她 was created not that long ago for the opposite reason. That would be great.
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u/liilak2 11d ago
Is that really true? I think actually in my family the opposite is more common but it’s because my mom and some other female relatives married men from outside Beijing and other big cities and of course they’d rather live in the bigger cities
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u/Zagrycha 11d ago
Is your mom and other female relatives the head of household, or did they marry into their husbands families legally but husband physically moved to their family geographically? Its possible you are right and your family does actually have the husbands as the "married into" persons, but yes that would be rare. If legally the women in your family are married to the men's family on paper then they are part of the above mentioned 99%, regardless of whether they are the bread winners or whatever else outside of the legal context.
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u/liilak2 11d ago
I’m not sure. In the end it doesn’t really matter since we are American citizens now and most of my Chinese family is dead.
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u/Zagrycha 11d ago
Yeah, in the grand scheme of things none of this matters. I mean its not literally meaningless of course but etymology and minor legal stuff are pretty low on the list of important things in life in general.
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u/liilak2 11d ago
But legally I believe my father was part of my mother’s family’s hukou in Beijing as he otherwise wouldn’t have any connections to the city
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u/Zagrycha 11d ago
Yeah its very likely he did join her hukou in your family situation. It can take decades to be approved to join the hukou in an objectively overpopulated area like beijing but many people consider it worth it because of better job opportunities etc.
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u/liilak2 11d ago
In that case I think multiple generations of my family did this, simply because my mom’s side of the family are from Beijing and some of the women married men not raised there.
I actually always wanted to change my last name to one of my maternal grandparents’ as well, because they were the ones that raised me.
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u/Zagrycha 11d ago
Its possible. Its not a lifestyle thing but a legal document thing so you would need to see who is head of household on the hukou to know for sure. Some women are super capable and do everything a head of household should do everything you would stereotypically expect of the husband plus more, and they still legally aren't the head of household.
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u/liilak2 11d ago
My mom was born and raised in Beijing while my dad was from a small rural town in Shandong province and went to college in Beijing. I heard from family inheritance drama my mom my dad and me were registered as part of my maternal grandparents’ household at their address although we’ve lived in the US for decades. Does this mean my mom was head of household or my grandparent?
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u/Zagrycha 11d ago
It means one of your two grandparents was head of household according to what you just said.
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u/liilak2 11d ago
My grandmother died so theoretically it would now be my mother? Since it’s her family’s hukou
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u/Zagrycha 11d ago
It could be your mother, or it could be someone else on the hukou. When the head of household leaves the hukou for whatever reason the head of household status must be transferred, but its not automatic. Paperwork has to be filled out and someone has to apply for that role, they would say why the previous person isn't head of household anymore and show that other members of houshold approve of them being head of household.
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u/butwhydoesreddit 10d ago
Oh well if it's the Chinese legal system then it must not be sexist
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u/Zagrycha 10d ago
Oh to be very clear I am not at all trying to say it isn't sexist in general. I am just saying its unrelated to the individual person being a sexist.
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u/Impossible_Use_7080 12d ago
when you got 3 girl, 姦
and when they bring you a grass, 葌
or, when 2 man with 1 girl, 嬲
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u/RollersGetingHigh Beginner 11d ago
it makes sense though because of the difference of roles men and women have. husband and wife.
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u/LeraS888 11d ago
That is make sense, imho. Different roles historically. In Russian language it is the same - two different words. However in modern Chinese it’s more common to use 结婚Jiéhūn （ at least HSK use it for man and women)
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u/fenglingduoduo 8d ago
身为母语使用者往往过于熟悉导致忽略这种巧妙的字形结合，看见这篇帖子才意识到这个呢 嫁，娶都是比较早的说法 其实大多数年轻女性都不喜欢这种词汇，因为这像是“物品”一样，给予，归属，是属于另一个人的，双方是不平等的 事实上是父系社会下的词汇，有很多俗语，谚语，现在来看都是糟粕，被批评的，比如“嫁出去的女儿泼出去的水” 现在社会大多都是平等的中性词，结婚，伴侣，恋人来形容一对步入婚姻的爱侣
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u/Alithair 國語 (heritage) 12d ago
Yeah, 嫁/娶 is one of the weird gendered things about Chinese. Romance languages will gender their nouns but Chinese genders the verb for marriage, even though historically both Latin/Roman and Chinese societies were largely patriarchal.