Today, you are going to learn how to say in English “mi hermano mayor” or “mi hijo mayor”.  

Since this is our first podcast episode, there is a little introduction at the beginning, in case you are curious you can listen to it from the beginning, but if you want to go to the lesson directly, go to minute 5' of the video. 

Please know, you will always have a summary of the lesson in Spanish at the end of each explanation in English, to make sure it is completely understood 😉

Of course you jump to the text down below to read the summary, but if you want to listen to it, here it is. (At the beginning of this podcast there is a little introduction, but if you want to go to the lesson directly, go to minute 6' of the audio)

¿Do you know how to say this in English?

It seems easy, right? Maybe you are already doing it correctly, that’s great! But just in case, let’s see:

The typical mistake is to say: “my bigger brother”.  Wrong!!  “Bigger” is the comparative form of the adjective “big”, and of course, we know “big” means “grande”, and that’s exactly the problem: we think, if “big” is grande, therefore, I can say “bigger”  NOOOOO!

This is because “big” refers to size (tamaño), not to age (edad). We need to use: “old” and “older”  because we are referring to his age, not to his size.

That means we are going to say:  “My older brother, my older sister, my older son”, etc.

But, never, never say: “my bigger brother” again  NO!

We are going to say: “my older brother”,  Ok? Well, knowing this, I can tell you now, that  we can also say:  “my big brother” or “my little brother”, and that is OK!

For example, I have a “little brother” who is younger than me, so, in theory, I should call him “my younger brother”, but since I love him so much, for me, he is my “little brother”!  You see?

But, never ever say:  “my smaller brother” nor “my bigger brother”, because again, in this text, we are talking about the size of all your brothers; the smaller one, or the bigger one (in size).

And that’s it for today’s article. 

Don’t forget it, you can say: “my little brother or my big brother”, but never, ever say: “my bigger brother”. You would say instead: “my OLDER brother, my older son, or my younger brother, my younger son”. All right?

And now a little summary in Spanish:

Por lo tanto y resumiendo: nunca, nunca digas: “my bigger brother” a no ser que tu hermano sea enorme y ¡el más grande en tamaño de todos tus hermanos! Lo que deberás decir es: “my older brother” porque en este caso nos estamos refiriendo a la diferencia de edad entre los dos, él es mayor que tú en edad, por tanto “he is older”.

Otra cosa es que le quieras poner cierto tono afectivo, y entonces podrías decir “my big brother”.

Lo mismo para con el más jovencito, tampoco podrás llamarle “my smaller brother”, sino “my younger bother”, y aquí también podrás llamarle de manera cariñosa “my little brother”.

Así que recuerda, nunca bigger, nunca smaller – Younger o Older – Big o Little.

Y eso es todo, en próximos episodios te enseñaré la diferencia entre “older” y “elder”.