Could anyone help me with the Japanese term that is used to address Father-in-laws and Mother-in-laws? The online sources that I’ve been able to find only give me the information in Japanese symbols, and I need alphabetic words and pronunciations.
Thanks for any help you can give.
According to www.freedict.com, two words for mother-in-law are shuutome (shoo-toe-may) and gibo (gee-boe). Three words for father-in-law are shuuto (shoo-toe), gifu (gee-foo), gakufu (ga-coo-foo). I don’t know what the differences in each of these words are; one may be more polite than the others.
According to my Japanese dictionary, the concept of *-in-law is achieved by adding the phrase “giri no” to the front of the normal form of address for the non-in-law relative.
So if you refer to someone’s mother as “okaasan”, you would call their mother-in-law “giri no okaasan”.