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I've come across the following sentence:
El de mi hermano también.
My brother, too.
What purpose is served by "el de"? Why not simply say:
Mi hermano también.
UPDATE: The above example is missing some context, but I was too unfamiliar with Spanish to realize it until RSanchez posted an answer.
The missing context is that there is a conversation between two individuals:
Person1: Mi coche es viejo.
Person2: El de mi hermano también.
El de can be translated by just the use of the genitive:
My brother's too.
In the Spanish construction, the article works as a pronoun; el means el coche, in this case. Using the noun instead of the article/pronoun:
El coche de mi hermano también.
El de mi hermano means:
The one of my brother
Your question lacks some context to know what are we referring to with el de or the one. There could be some cases where el de mi hermano, también translates to my brother, too, but there's insufficient information to know if that's the case or not.
Strictly speaking, it would translate as "that of", i.e. "that [thing] of my brother".
But in English you use 's for possession, that's why you don't find a 1:1 relation.
