[afiori]

Paternal grandmother, paternal grandfather, maternal grandmother, and maternal grandfather

[Agentlien]

There is a big difference, though. In English you would usually say grandma/grandpa and rarely qualify by on which side.

In Swedish and Norwegian you always specify because the words for grandparents are inherent specific to whether they are paternal or maternal.

[afiori]

In everyday speech you generally do not try to be this specific, but if you wanted to (e.g. recounting family history to a doctor or talking about the relationship between your parents and granparents) you could use them to be more specific in a clear way.

I agree that almost every use of farfar should be simply translated as grandmother.

[throwaway290]

Will you be satisfied if your brother or sister were only describable as "sibling"? Would it roll off your tongue?

Similarly in many languages using the wildcard equivalent to mean something more specific is unnatural.

[afiori]

I do not undestand how this relates to my comment... I only said that if you wanted to precisely localize mormor to english you could.

[throwaway290]

Ok, I thought you were against having capabilities for supporting mormor as a dedicated word in software (like in the topic post)

[watwut]

English speaking people do not use these all that often. They say "grandmother" or "grandfather". They specify which side of family these come from only when they really need it for some reason.

Unlike those other languages we talk about.