Japanese Words #2 – Ashi
The other day a student asked me a question about the use of the word ‘ashi’ (足, 脚). This is a seemingly simple word, which is probably one of the first that any child or any Japanese learner will learn. But it does come with a few quirks…
First of all, the word ‘ashi’ roughly translates as ‘leg’, but it also accounts for what we would call in English our ‘foot’. Indeed, I have asked many Japanese people for another everyday word that means ‘foot’ by itself, and I am yet to find one. The quirk arises because there are two kanji for the word ‘ashi’ (足 and 脚), and one of these is appropriately translated as the foot (足) and the other as leg (脚). Thus when someone has long legs, we say that their ‘ashi ga nagai’ (脚が長い), and when someone has blisters on their feet, we say that ‘ashi ni mame ga dekita’ (足にまめができた). This is fine as far as written Japanese goes, but it can be endlessly confusing in certain contexts in spoken Japanese…
Many people now tend to use the term ‘futto’ (フット), which is of course the ‘katakana-ized’ version of the English word ‘foot’, but even this is not such a clear cut thing. Since this is a borrowed word itself, there tends to be no clear delineation between ‘foot’ and ‘feet’ in Japanese.
My student asked me, and the rest of the class, how to translate the measurement ‘ichi futto’ (1フット). The entire class replied: ’1 feet’. This disturbed me somewhat…. I felt like perhaps I had failed in my job, since this quite advanced class of English learners were obviously unfamiliar with vocabulary that any self-respecting 2 year old knows backwards… But apparently the confusion over a Japanese term for our feet has led to the point where they don’t know whether they have one or two. So next time you Americans are teaching measurements, using feet and inches, be sure to teach that 1フット is one foot, and not one feet. I of course don’t need to worry so much, since Australia haven’t used this archaic system of measurement since the 1970s……
Related posts:
- Japanese Words #1 – Muzukashii
- Japanese Words #3 – Shitsurei
- Japanese Words #6 – Ganbatte Kudasai (がんばってください)
- Japanese Words #5 – Sumimasen
- Japanese Words #4 – Otsukaresama & Gokurosama
Tags: Japanese, Japanese Words
You’re right, it does get a bit confusing, unless a load of pointing goes on to accompany which body part you’re actually referring to. I remember way back when I was learning this vocab and my teacher just skirted over the subject like it didn’t exist. Bizarre.
Interesting. Thanks for this information. I recently learned about the word ashi in my Japanese class and was taught that it meant both leg and foot. It’s weird that they would only have one word for the both even though there are different kanji.
There are plenty of words like this in Japanese. For ashi, you forgot to mention 肢. If you’re confused about the definition, how about looking it up in a dictionary? 足 means from the ankle to the tip of a toe. 脚 means from the ankle to pelvis. 肢 is limb. To put it simply in English, 足 foot, 脚 leg、手 hand, 腕 arm. Furthermore, 足 is used in reference to humans, 脚 for insects, and 肢 for mammals. If there is confusion about which word you mean (which is unlikely due to conversational context), use more specific words like 足の裏 or もも to explain the situation. Or you could just point.
フット isn’t a word used in Japanese unless it’s in a word like 「フットウェア」, which will probably come up as 履き物 anyway. You’re never going to hear a Japanese person say 「フットが痛い」or something similar.「ふっと」is an adverb for a quick, unexpected movement. If you’re talking about the measurement system, the word is フィート, which is used for “one foot” as well as “two feet” and so on in Japanese (１フィート、２フィート). If you’re teaching JAPANESE and you say 1フット, you’re teaching Japanese wrong. Of course, the difference in clear in English. You should already know that loanwords in Japanese don’t follow the rules of their original language, which is apparent in words like ワクチン、エネルギー、カンニング and thousands of others.