---
title: Family: mum, dad, brothers and sisters — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics
description: «Family: mum, dad, brothers and sisters», a lesson of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: In English a brother is just a brother.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Chinese street](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/) / Family: mum, dad, brothers and sisters

# Family: mum, dad, brothers and sisters

<!-- .vabout -->
Lesson 9 of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school: 11 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/).

<!-- list vl: b t -->
- [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/0/) — In English a brother is just a brother.
- [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/1/) — In Mandarin he is always older (gēge) or younger (dìdi), and a sister is jiějie (older) or mèimei (younger).
- [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/2/) — Who is older matters.
- [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/4/) — Any big girl in the playground is jiějie to the little ones.
- [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/6/) — When Ming says «lái wǒ jiā wánr ba» (come and play at my house), jiā is both home and family, and the invitation is real.
- [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/9/) — gēge («GUH-guh») is big brother, also an older boy a child looks up to; when you talk about one brother, you nearly always say whether he is older or younger.
- [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/10/) — jiějie («JYEH-jyeh») is big sister and any big girl to little children; younger ones never call her by her name.
- [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/13/) — wǒ jiā («waw JYAH») means my home and my family; «dào wǒ jiā» is a real invitation.
- [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/14/) — nǐ yǒu xiōngdì jiěmèi ma? means have you got brothers or sisters?; answers are yǒu, wǒ yǒu yí ge dìdi, or méiyǒu.
- [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/15/) — dúshēngzǐ («DOO?-shung-dz») is an only child (for a girl dúshēngnǚ); it is not sad or strange, and many parents who grew up in China are only children themselves.
- [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/9-family-mum-dad-brothers-sisters/17/) — wǒ mā («waw MAH») is a casual «my mum» among kids, as in «wǒ mā shuō bù xíng» (my mum says no); his mum is āyí to you.

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Colours](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/)
- next →: [Grandparents, aunties and uncles — how families address elders](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/10-grandparents-aunties-uncles/)
- ↑ back to [Chinese street](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/)