Last Sunday a small scene finally convinced me to have a few words on an amusing fact about different cultural concepts:
Scene no. 1 – Years ago, me still an innocent newcomer to India, I tried to engage in small talk with a small girl at a children’s camp. I asked her, how many brothers and sisters she had. She replied promptly: 12! After overcoming my initial shock, I tried to ask, how many of them were boys and how many girls. Then the girl started explaining: Alice Aunty has 2 boys and 1 girl. Beena Aunty has 2 girls. …What an insight to an astonished German student!
Scene no. 2 – Last Sunday I am introduced to a youth member in a church. While we are talking another young man enters into the circle and starts engaging in the conversation. Pradeep just mentions, that it is his brother. For a split second my mind goes off the conversation and on to notice the striking difference in the two people’s appearance. But ok, siblings can look different, can’t they. A minute later, another young man comes and stands on the other side of him, and again, he just says, “This is my other brother.” This time I can’t help it but my mind seriously rebels, since the third one again doesn’t seem to have anything in common with either of the previous 2 people.
Just when I started to try and come to terms with this amazing dissimilarity among siblings, the information became complete: the one was a maternal cousin brother and the other a cousin of the paternal side. Relief for the tortured German soul!
It is quite striking how different cultural concepts are so deeply rooted in a person that even after many years, I was still not prepared that the word ‘brother’ could be used in any other sense than for an own brother, born by the same mother.
On the other hand, I must say that in many cases I also wonder whether the relation between first cousins is always so intense and close as a relation between own siblings. At least in my case, I can say that the relation between me and my cousins comes in no way close to the relation I share with my siblings. Therefore, I still feel a hesitation to extend the use of the word to other than one’s own sisters and brothers.
(Zusammenfassung: Ein junger Mann stellt mir zwei andere junge Männer als seine Brüder vor. Die drei sehen so unterschiedlich aus, dass ich erleichtert bin, als schließlich klar wird, es sind Cousins. Ein junges Mädchen erzählt mir von ihren 12 Geschwistern, die sich schliesslich auch als die Kinder ihrer Tanten entpuppen. Ich bin so daran gewöhnt, dass Bruder und Schwester immer leibliche Geschwister bezeichnet, dass es mir schwerfällt, mich von dieser weitergefassten Verwendung nicht irreführen zu lassen.)
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