On Thu, 28 Aug 1997 demonsword@vasia.com wrote:

Little Sister
Little Brother

In Japan, elder siblings usually call their younger brothers
or sisters by a shortening of their names into a "cutesy"
pet name appended to -chan. However, if you want to
get to it, "otouto" is for little brother and "imouto" is for
little sister.

Additionally (this is just my observation from when I was in Japan as an
exchange student), it seems that 'imouto' is used more often than
'otouto'... but in both cases, the shortened name and -chan suffix were
more common than the formal term.

Additionally, 'oneesan' and 'oniisan' are not always used alone... they
can be tacked onto a name like -san or -chan or -kun.  AND, to further
confuse matters, they can also be used not just for biological siblings,
but for people you respect like an older sibling... :)

----[Loki]-----------------------------------------------------------------
Jeremy Blackman / Anime fan/fanfic author, Game Designer/Engineer
loki@maison-otaku.net (personal mail) / Maison Otaku Productions founder
loki@thekeep.org      (mailing lists) / Fanfic author / anime
jeremy@lith.com       (work)          / Monolith Productions