Kinship
Marriage
The verb for the life-bonding of two people is ju’iduku よいどくる to marry. This is intended to be eternal, but can be broken if requested by either partner. It is not an exclusive arrangement, and one can be involved in concurrent marriages.
A bonded person is called a silu せを spouse when using possessive pronouns, and xalli ざっえ married person otherwise.
Nuclear Family
The words kitisu きてす father and julliga よっえが mother usually refer to biological parents, but can be applied to the main guardians if the biological parents are not around. These are used without possessives other than -qa げ gen, the inalienable genitive marker. The following table shows the possessive forms:
| mother | father | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | pi’apahi ぴあぱひ | sappahi さっぱひ |
| 2nd person | pihaba ぴはば | sabba さっば |
| 3rd person animate | pi’adisi ぴあでせ | saddisi さっでせ |
There are two terms for children: tu と offspring for postnatal children, ’appu あっぷ foetus for antenatal. Both of these are gender-neutral, and are most often used with possessives.
There can be a suffixed ju’i よい link for spouses’ offspring and parents’ spouses.
“my step-father”
“your step-daughter”
Other kinship terms began as nuclear family names, but were thence extended across a generation. So kaqqa かっげ elder sibling and kica きや younger sibling can also be applied to cousins.