The word “sister” literally means “own woman” or “own family woman”. Linguistic scholars suggest that it came from the Indo-European “sw-sor”, spread throughout all language groups and is now as often used as the word “mother”.
Family ties
The generally accepted definition is that a sister is a child of the same parents from the point of view of the same child. However, depending on the degree of relationship or property, they distinguish:
- Unmarried (common mother) and consanguineous (common father) sisters. Often they are called incomplete.
- Step sisters, that is, not having a blood connection, but considered to be relatives due to the marriage of their parents.
- Cousins - the children of a brother or sister of one of the parents. In the European tradition, cousins.
- The sister-in-law or sister-in-law is a social property, denoting, respectively, the sister of a husband or wife.
- Distribution by age is widespread - younger and older sister. As a rule, such a distribution implies a certain position and responsibilities (the older one is the main one, the more responsible, the younger one is spoiled).
Female representatives are also leading in the groups of born babies - the number of girls is 67% of all multiple pregnancies. From a medical point of view, they are all twins, but in everyday use they are called twins, or twins. It is noteworthy that in relation to boys, treatment in such an affectionate form is less characteristic.
In addition to kinship, a sister is also a status appeal, meaning a profession (medical staff), social status (nun) or membership in a religious group (sect).
Handling and abbreviations
The word "sister" has a similar sound in many languages. In particular, in Belarusian, Ukrainian, Serbian, it is similar in pronunciation to the familiar Russian ear. In others, the word is pronounced only a little differently. For example, like this:
- English - sister ("sister").
- French - sœur.
- Swedish - syster.
- German - Schwester ("shvester").
- Polish - siostra.
- Uzbek - apa.
For Asia, the absence of the word "sister" as a separate morpheme is characteristic. In Chinese, Korean and Japanese, there is a separate designation for each “species” of such relatives. In Korea, in particular, the older sister is called "Nuna", the youngest - "Onni", in Japanese the oldest of the children will be called "One" ("One-san"), and the youngest - "IMO."
In Russian, the word has many derivatives that have one meaning, which is associated with high flexibility of the language. A Russian sister can also be called “sister”, “sister”, “sister”, “sister” and each of these names will be decent, appropriate for use in certain circumstances.
Family ties and incest
Incest is an intimate relationship between close blood relatives in a descending (vertical) or horizontal line, including cousins. This phenomenon is prohibited by law and is actively condemned by society, but nevertheless, interest in sexual relations between brothers and sisters is not weakening.
In the recent, by historical standards, past incest of this kind was quite common. Everyone knows that the pharaohs of Egypt married their sisters (native and consanguineous) in order to maintain the purity of the line, and the dynasties of Plantagenets, Capetings, Lancaster, Habsburgs at one time married almost exclusively with cousins. In the latter, relations between relatives happened so often that they led to complete degeneration.
During the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe among the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, approximately 70% were marriages between cousins. And about any perversions and there was no speech. With the inheritance system that existed at that time, a cousin-sister was the only way to keep the state intact and pass the title on by inheritance.
In the modern world, matrimony between cousins is prohibited in most countries. However, in the Middle East, its pace, on the contrary, is growing at a dangerous rate. In Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, marriages of brothers with cousins and second cousins account for 30% of the total, and in some regions the figure is even higher.
Legislation of the Russian Federation
According to Art. 14 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation, a sister is a close relative related to other children by blood relationship to at least one of the parents. The status of a sister or brother allows you to:
- Notify them of detention by law enforcement authorities within 12 hours.
- The right not to testify against them.
- The right to receive administrative leave at work at any time for their funeral.
- The right to exemption from property tax received as a gift.
Norms of Art. 93 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation also oblige sisters and brothers to support other minor family members if their parents cannot do this for objective reasons (death, stay in places of detention, absence). They are also indirect heirs in the event of death. The turn of siblings comes after parents, spouses and children, and the cousin turns in the absence of other relatives, including their own parents.
Fiction and Cinematography
The topic of relations between sisters and other children is one of the most popular in the creative world and does not depend on time and country. The number of works where the line of brotherly-sister relations is not just touched in passing, but is one of the most important, is quite large. Such novels as Pride and Prejudice (Charlotte Bronte), Little Women (Louise Alcott), Three Sisters (Anton Chekhov), Asylum (Shirley Jackson), and Flowers in the Attic have long been classics of world literature. ”(Virginia Andrews) and many others. Even the symbol of Russian poetry - Alexander Pushkin - through the centuries talks about sisters and the conflict between them.
Film companies from different countries also did not ignore the sisters. In addition to the film versions of books on this subject, there are original stories - “Cruel Intentions” (USA, 1999), “Caligula” (Italy, 1979), “Difficult Children” (France, 1950), “Brotherhood of the Wolf” (France , 2001), “My sister, my love” (Japan, 2007), “A bed for a brother and sister” (Sweden, 1965).
Among modern series, the most famous are Game of Thrones and Hemlock Grove. Among the anime about sister and brother, there are also tapes. For example, you should see “Angel's Refuge,” “Connected by Heaven,” “I Love My Sister,” and “Sister's Misconception.”
Celebrity Sisters
There are many famous people in the world who work in a related tandem. You can meet them in almost all areas of life, but especially a lot of them in the film industry. Everyone has heard Mary-Kate and Ashley Walson, known for the twin films ("Me and My Shadow", "Vacations in Paris"), Monica - the younger sister of the famous Penelope Cruz. The list can be continued for a long time. In sport, the twins Victoria and Valentina Semerenko, who devoted their lives to biathlon, are widely known, and in fiction the most famous are still the Bronte sisters - Anne, Charlotte and Emilia.