Why ‘brothers and sisters’ is just one word in German
In one of last week’s chats, Anja asks Sebastian whether he has any brothers and sisters. This is how she says it:
Why is it Geschwister and not something like Brüder oder Schwestern?
Geschwister is the German word for siblings, a term which covers both brothers and sisters. To understand why German speakers prefer asking about your siblings instead of your brothers or sisters, we need to turn the question around: why do English speakers insist on using the longer phrase brothers or sisters when the shorter siblings would do just as well?
I don’t know if you’ll agree with me but I think it’s because siblings is a formal, technical word. It’s not a word people would use in everyday conversation. The only time you might get asked about your siblings is if it’s your lawyer sorting out your inheritance or your doctor interested in heriditary diseases. For all other contexts, brothers or sisters is the preferred phrase.
Not in German though. In German, the word Geschwister doesn’t have this technical, formal connotation. It’s a normal everyday word. That’s why in German, the normal way to ask about someone’s brothers or sisters is what Anja says: Hast du Geschwister?
