Should a man ask for permission from his future bride's parents?

[Valmy]

Yeah Marti, my associate who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, French, English and some Spanish would be completely oblivious to any language nuance.  I should definitely trust wiki on this one.  There could never be a different use of the words.

Well it looks like the concept in Anthropology is called 'Bride Price' but that may not be what it is called in the actual cultures it is used.  Alot of Anthropology concepts are like that right?

[crazy canuck]

Oh, I imagine they don't call it "bride price" or "dowry". They probably have their own word for it.  The Chinese are so troublesome like that, they have to have a separate word for everything.  I got my definition from so college course I took a long time ago.  Sociology or anthropology or something like that.

They do indeed have their own word but my associate used used the word dowry in its place.  Others may want to put their own word on it which is essentially what anthropologists do as a matter of categorization of human activities.

Its funny how this came up in our office.  There was some joking around about another of our associates not demanding a dowry for his new wife and my other associate made the point that he had it easy because it was his family who should be paying the dowry.

It may be that if asked whether bride price might also fit as a description she might also agree to that.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah Marti, my associate who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, French, English and some Spanish would be completely oblivious to any language nuance.  I should definitely trust wiki on this one.  There could never be a different use of the words.

Well it looks like the concept in Anthropology is called 'Bride Price' but that may not be what it is called in the actual cultures it is used.  Alot of Anthropology concepts are like that right?

Yep.

[Razgovory]

Yeah Marti, my associate who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, French, English and some Spanish would be completely oblivious to any language nuance.  I should definitely trust wiki on this one.  There could never be a different use of the words.

Well it looks like the concept in Anthropology is called 'Bride Price' but that may not be what it is called in the actual cultures it is used.  Alot of Anthropology concepts are like that right?

Yeah, Dowry may be a the colloquial English term for any transfer of wealth that takes place before a wedding.  Bride price may be the term a social scientist came up with to differentiate the two since I don't think paying the women's family is a common enough occurrence in English speaking Europe to warrant its own organic word.  It could also be that "Dowry" is simply the the English traditional translation of a Chinese word which does not have an exact English term to describe it or the original translators were simply ignorant of less used term "bride price"

According to online etymology dictionary the word "gift" seems to have been close to the concept of "Bride price".

[Malthus]

Actually, Raz has it right: in English, "dowry" always, in colloquial use, means a transfer of wealth from the wife's family. English lacks a one-word descriptor for the reverse because it isn't a part of English culture to do the reverse.

Look up "dowry" in the dictonary - in the Oxford Canadian, it is "property or money brought by a bride to her husband at marrage".

["bride price" is also defined there - "A payment of money or goods made to a bride or her parents by the bridegroom or his parents"] 

[Martinus]

Yeah Marti, my associate who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, French, English and some Spanish would be completely oblivious to any language nuance.  I should definitely trust wiki on this one.  There could never be a different use of the words.

Well it looks like the concept in Anthropology is called 'Bride Price' but that may not be what it is called in the actual cultures it is used.  Alot of Anthropology concepts are like that right?

The thing is, the concept of bride price does not exist in English-speaking cultures and hence no "native" word for it.

[Martinus]

I dont think that is universally true.  In some parts of China a dowry can also be the husband's family paying the wife's family.  For some Chinese families that tradition has carried on after they moved to Canada.  As an example of this one of my associates is often teased by her father that she needs to get married so that he can recover the dowry he had to pay when his son got married.  They dont refer to it as a "bride price".

It wouldn't be the first time when someone misuses a word, especially one with historical/traditional connotations. Especially when herself she is coming from a different culture/language (Hint: English is not the first language for people living in "some parts of China"). 

According to wiki, Raz is right:

A dowry (also known as trousseau or tocher or, in Latin, dos) is the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings forth to the marriage.[1][2] It contrasts with bride price, which is paid to the bride's parents, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage.

Yeah Marti, my associate who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, French, English and some Spanish would be completely oblivious to any language nuance.  I should definitely trust wiki on this one.  There could never be a different use of the words.

Anyone who knows anything about languages, knows there is never a complete 1:1 translation of every word in the dictionary. She might have used a closest word in English but as Raz, Malthus and me (through wikipedia) pointed out that was not technically correct. Are you incapable of admitting you are wrong despite overwhelming evidence?

In any case, why would I trust your anecdotal colleague over wikipedia? Wtf. Wikipedia may be a not 100% reliable source, but that's when compared to other scientific/encyclopedic sources. Not to "someone I know".

[crazy canuck]

Anyone who knows anything about languages, knows there is never a complete 1:1 translation of every word in the dictionary. She might have used a closest word in English but as Raz, Malthus and me (through wikipedia) pointed out that was not technically correct. Are you incapable of admitting you are wrong?

The argument you made is not the same as the one Malthus and Raz made.  Their's was one of definition.  Your argument was that somehow my associate misunderstood the historical and traditional connotations of the word.  She understood the connotations perfectly which is what made her jab at my other associate work as a joke.

You however misunderstand such analogies and so I can see your difficulty in following her reasoning.

[Caliga]

I didn't ask.  We eloped

Really?  That's hott.

[Caliga]

My brother and his fiancee are back to talking about forcing everyone to go to a destination wedding.

I can afford that no problem, but IMO it's pretty selfish since not all of their friends and family can, and as my mom is deathly afraid to fly she wouldn't go either.

[Ed Anger]

forcing everyone to go to a destination wedding

forcing? I'd tell him to fuck off.

[Caliga]

His response would be "We don't care.  It's about us, not everyone else."

[Ed Anger]

His response would be "We don't care.  It's about us, not everyone else."

I'd shrug and send them a toaster oven as a present.

[Caliga]

Good idea.  Scip, got a spare I can borrow?

[sbr]

His response would be "We don't care.  It's about us, not everyone else."

Then everyone else should make sure it is all about them by staying home.