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What I understand:

A way of referring to a group of people by just 1 person can be done with saying [name]-[honorific, if any] tachi. (I seem to be right based on this and this.)

  • Eg For the group of the 6 Tanaka siblings with 1st names Ashanti, Bidatz, Mikoto, Smith, Wesson and Yellow, assuming you would call each as 1st name-san, you might refer to them as 'Ashanti-san tachi', which I understand either literally means 'Ashanti-san and the others' or nonsensically literally means 'plural of Ashanti-san' but really means Ashanti-san and the others'.

  • Either way I guess 'たち' here is like 'et al'. (I guess it's similar to the Philippine word 'sila', where you'd say 'sila Ashanti' even though 'sila' ordinarily means 'they'. But maybe a better analogy is the Mandarin 们. Idk.)

Question: Can you refer to the siblings by 2 of them, and if so then how would you do so? Perhaps Ashanti-san と Bidatz-san たち?

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Yes, you can say AさんとBさんたち. It refers to one group of people including both A and B. Technically speaking, however, this is an ambiguous phrase, and it can also refer to "A, and a gruop of people including B". This kind of ambiguity is not usually a problem when there is enough context.

If you used たち twice (AさんたちとBさんたち), it naturally refers to two groups of people.

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  • oh man thanks i think...it's like...'green keyboard and mouse' where depending on context 'green' can describe both keyboard and mouse or just the keyboard? So here it depends where the tachi describes the whole A and B or just the B...but as you said usually you can tell from the context?
    – BCLC
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 10:35

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