"Oniisan" and "oneesan" and their variants are often used by children for older non-relatives that are not too far apart in age from the speaker (expect the kid Victim of the Week to address the hero this way throughout the episode, for example.) If the addressee is a generation older, "ojisan" or "obasan" (meaning "uncle" and "aunt", respectively) may be used instead and if they are two or more generations older, "ojiisan" or "obaasan" (meaning "grandfather" and "grandmother", respectively) may be used as well. It is also not uncommon for sibling terminology to be used for non-relatives. On the other hand, younger siblings are pretty much universally addressed by their given name. Conversely, whereas calling your older siblings by their name is normal in English, it's a serious breach of manners in Japanese when not attached with a familial term, on par with Calling Parents by Their Name, and definitely marks a distance between the two siblings if used at all. This is Serious Business, by the way while calling older siblings by "brother" or "sister" is considered old-timey in English, it's part of modern etiquette in Japanese. depending on how he regards Kenta, with the most common way being a simple "oniisan". So the speaker may call his older brother (say, Kenta) "oniisan", "oniichan", "Kenta-niisan", etc. These are used when the speaker is describing someone else's sibling (see above) as well as when he is addressing his own older sibling. These are normally found in conjunction with an honorific -san and -chan being among the most common for all four, although -sama is sometimes used for respected older siblings, while "baby-talk" equivalents such as -tan, -tama and -chama are limited for very young children. Rather, he will use "Hanako no oniisan".Īdditionally, ani and ane can take the honorific prefix o- in place of the initial a (and simultaneously double the i / e sound), which indicates further respect. Logically, describing Hanako's older brother would be "Hanako no anisan", but this is grammatically incorrect. If he is describing someone else (say, Hanako)'s younger brother, he will say "Hanako no otōtosan", using the common honorific -san indicating respect. If the speaker is talking about his older and younger brothers, for example, he will say " ani" note The reason why "watashi no" is bracketed is because "ani"/"ane" is rarely used for anything other than referring to the speaker's own older brother/sister, so adding "My" is redundant. These four terms are normally used when the speaker is describing siblings. Where English makes no distinction between elder and younger siblings, Japanese has words that classify both gender and age (relative to the speaker) for a sibling.
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