With a bit of fiddeling you can use every kind of bracket to basically make function calls in c++
Here are the links to the snippets, all compile and run
Rust: https://godbolt.org/z/bM3d7bG14
No, I'm not confusing things but directly referencing Wikipedia (and as explicitly mentioned British English):
( ) (round) brackets
[ ] square brackets
{ } curly brackets
<> angle brackets
American English however calls the same:
( ) parentheses
[ ] (square) brackets
{ } (curly) braces
<> angle brackets or chevrons
Yes, that means British an American people are meaning different things when talking about brackets (round vs. square as the default).
So I will repeat myself:
English (at least British English) does in fact the same thing.
round, square, curly and angle brackets...
So given that big chunks of the world learn British English it is probably not just a "German thing" as OP suggested.