Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Quanti fratelli hai? Curiosità

Sappiamo benissimo che in italiano indichiamo anche le sorelle con 
quella affermazione.
In inglese una traduzione letterale sarebbe:
"How many brothers do you have?"
Ma con tutta probabilit� verrebbe intesa come "quanti fratelli maschi hai"?
Quindi la domanda corretta sarebbe: "How many brothers and sister do you 
have?"
Sono semplici differenze interpretative o c'� una spiegazione grammaticale?
Thanks.
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Immagino si potrebbe chiedere "How many siblings do you have?" per
risolvere la questione. Ma anche in italiano non e' cosi' neutro come lo
fai sembrare. Una risposta normale puo' essere "Non ho fratelli, ho solo
due sorelle". 
Ciao,
G

 
I'm not sure why you're asking... In certain cases, English doesn't make use 
of the masculine form to represent both genders. For that reason, it's common 
to ask "how many brothers and sisters..." or "do you have any brothers and 
[sic: not 'or'] sisters?"
The term 'siblings' isn't all that common in ''common speak,' either. I'll 
bet the "Average Joe" (I hate that phrase) would never think to use it.
Likewise 'My aunts and uncles will be at the dinner..." 
In the case of "I have six nieces and nephews" there could be confusion. Do I 
have six of each or a total of six? I would probably say "I have four nieces 
and two nephews" or whatever the numbers are.
Where the masculine form /is/ used to represent both genders (usually in the 
case of pronouns), all sorts of PC arguments arise and I don't want to go 
there... it's been discussed ad nauseam.
-- 
Joe/Joey da New York
English as she is spoken (and sometimes written) in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke

 [sic: not 'or'] sisters?"
I think I wrote "and"   :-)

):


Yes, you did; I wasn't correcting you, but rather pointing out that the 
logical wording would be "or," but for some reason "and" is the usual choice.


"Joe/Joey da New York" <joe...@invalid.invalid> ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:0001HW.C7A98585...@news.eternal-september.org...
[megacut]
Mink che rispostone!
Niente, non riesco ad immedesimarmi nella sega mentale, c'ha ragione Kiu. Mi 
sono figurata un form form che chiedeva  quella informazione e il termine 
era siblings, tutto quello che ha pensato Joe manco mi � passato 
nell'anticamera del cervello!
Ciao, Janis 

 usual choice.
Really? I'm surprised, I would have guess "or" was more common...
I'd hate to contradict you but googling "do you have any brothers or 
sisters" gets more than 1 million hits, while the version with "and"  only 
72000...
Of course raw google serches hardly count as authoritative sources but the 
results seems to indicate that the "or" version is (to say the least) in 
widespread use as well.
What do you think? 

 72000...
I'm oh so surprised you google those things!
What google are you using? I get a 665,000 figure for the phrase with and, 
and 279,000 using 'or'.
ciao, J. 

 ciao, J.
lol a brand new game:
www.google.it
:
1.220.000 per "do you have any brothers or sisters"
 72.400 per "do you have any brothers and sisters". 


That's right, I used google.it...
I've just tried 
www.google.co.uk
 selecting "pages from the UK":
"do you have any brothers or sisters"  40,900
"do you have any brothers and sisters"  2,050
"have you got any brothers or sisters" 7,590
"have you got any brothers and sisters" 3,330
And for completeness:
"have you got any siblings" 5,250
"do you have any siblings" 6,700
Perhaps I'll have a look at Swan and/or to a grammar book to see what it 
says. Not that it is a matter of life and death of course, just as a 
curiousity. 

Maybe it's different with "How many ... do you have?" I'd say "and"
not "or" there.