WhatsApp risks losing its most loyal customers: Indian uncles and aunties
Can someone explain the language phenomenon of referring to a set of people as &quot;uncles and aunties&quot;? I&#x27;ve ubiquitously heard this from expats and students from east Asian countries, and according to this article it seems to be normal usage in India as well.<p>In Russian (and various other languages of Eastern Europe), &quot;uncle&quot; and &quot;aunt&quot; can be used to address a stranger on the street. It comes off as a bit intimate or even childish. It doesn&#x27;t suggest that the person you&#x27;re addressing is related to you. If you don&#x27;t know the name to address someone by, it&#x27;s less brutish than the alternatives, &quot;hey man&quot; and &quot;hey lady.&quot;<p>For example, in the greatest work of Russian literature (<i>The Twelve Chairs</i>), the main character enters the scene pursued by a street urchin who keeps asking him, &quot;Uncle, gimme ten cents!&quot; The urchin earns the immortal reply, perhaps the best-known line in all of modern prose: &quot;Maybe you also want the keys to the apartment where the money is?&quot;<p>But this &quot;aunties&quot; and &quot;uncles&quot; seems to be different. I get a sense that it suggests a circle of doting busybody relatives who dance around you all day to attend to your whims as the baby of the family. Or something like that. What does it mean?