兄弟 – How to say Brother in Japanese
There is more than one way to talk about your brother in Japanese. Japanese differentiates between your older brother, younger brother, and even between other people’s brothers. Let’s take a look.
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How to say Big Brother in Japanese?
A very common word and that many people who watch anime will most likely know, is お兄さん. This is the word for big brother in Japanese. There is another word for brother, 兄 which is used when talking about your own older brother. おにいさん is also said for one’s own older brother in different contexts though. If you are interested I go more into detail about it below:
How to say Little Brother in Japanese?
弟 is the word for little brother in Japanese. When you are talking about your own brother you would say 弟. If you are talking about someone else’s little brother then actually you would also say 弟 or 弟さん. 弟さん would of course be the more polite way to refer to someone’s brother.
https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/What do I say for just Brother?
If you want to talk about just a brother without indicating whether they are older or younger you can say 兄弟. You can see actually that this word uses both the characters for older and younger brother. This word actually also refers to siblings in general. So, you could use it when talking about brothers and sisters. But, there is also a specific word just to talk about sisters, which is 姉妹.
Brother One, Two, and Three
Japanese also gives you the ability to talk about brothers by the order of birth. So, if you want to say the eldest brother, that would be 長男. The second-born would then be 次男 followed by the third, 三男.
