野菜 means ‘vegetable’, right?
Sunday August 20, 2006I’ve commented on the site about how two seemingly equivalent words in English and Japanese can have unexpected differences when compared more closely.
My tutor and I were discussing fruit and vegetables the other day. “Fruit” in Japanese is 果物 (くだもの), and “vegetable” is 野菜 (やさい) — if you look them up in a typical English-Japanese dictionary. Japanese tend to divide edible plants into these two categories (plus cereals) just as English speakers do. As usual, however, some surprises lurk — particularly the fact that 西瓜 (すいか, watermelon) is a 野菜 in Japanese! I’ve had two Japanese friends verify this for me. The reason for this classification, my tutor decided, is that watermelon grow on the ground from low-lying plants, while a 果物 is expected to grow from a tree most of the time. In English, however, the decision would usually be based on the sweetness of the plant in question, although the avocado may be an exception.
Getting precise definitions of words is nearly impossible without educated native speakers to consult. Yahoo’s online Kokugo Dictionary is quite unhelpful, saying only that 野菜 is a general term for plants eaten as food.
PS: Am I the only one who wishes that すいか was written with the water kanji 水 instead of 西? And for the record, I refuse to use the katakana version.
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