322 Grandchild

Neil Edbrooke is an award-winning photographer and also a grandfather. In today’s episode, ShaoLan teaches him the Chinese for “grandchild,” because Neil has four of them! He describes some of his favorite parts of being a grandparent, which include listening to the youngest one laughing! Inevitably, there are more layers of description in Chinese when it comes to grandchildren, so ShaoLan teaches the different words for grandson, granddaughter and even how to distinguish between grandchildren from the daughter’s side of the family and grandchildren from the son’s side. Can you guess which is the “outer” grandchild and which is the “inner” one?

The Chinese word for “grandchild” is 孫/孙. In this case, it simply means grandchild, so if we want to differentiate between male and female children we simply add the words for “son” and “daughter/woman.” Therefore, grandson is 孫子/孙子 and granddaughter is 孫女/孙女.