teyze

With this more explicit vocabulary, interesting things can be expressed succinctly that would be cumbersome in English (see Sapir-Whorf:-), eg boys take after their dayi and girls after their hala or that as a general consensus you like your teyze better than your hala.

I can think about my "mother's sister" but I don't care about it enough to invent a shortcut word for it like "teyze".

In Turkish, as you comment, we have: * Aunt (father’s side) - hala * Aunt (mother’s side) - teyze * Uncle (father’s side) - amca * Uncle (mother’s side) - dayi You use teyze to refer to an unknown older woman and amca to an unknown older men (similar to how “uncle” is used in Mandarin).

I can think about my "mother's sister" but I don't care about it enough to invent a shortcut word for it like "teyze".

In Turkish, as you comment, we have: * Aunt (father’s side) - hala * Aunt (mother’s side) - teyze * Uncle (father’s side) - amca * Uncle (mother’s side) - dayi You use teyze to refer to an unknown older woman and amca to an unknown older men (similar to how “uncle” is used in Mandarin).