I think that 皮 is not used for human skin (animals, fruit, etc.), but the Wanikani description and mnemonic both refer to “your skin” several times. This had me thinking that I could use it for my skin… Which made my teacher laugh.
Should this be clarified in the description (“don’t use for human skin?”)
It is both actually
Here are a couple example sentences where it refers to a human’s skin specifically:
Beauty is skin deep
Sunburnt skin
Skin and bones
It’s a bit like how we have the words “hide” and “skin” in English. One is more natural in some contexts while the other works better in others. 皮 gets a bit closer to “hide” in a lot of cases, but in English we also refer to our own skin as a hide every now and again. (Save your hide etc)
So both are kind of right. Though generally our own skin on its own, a human skin, would be 肌. The usage between skin/hide and the close equivalents in Japanese with 肌/皮 doesn’t translate equally 1:1 though. Especially when accounting for kanji usage in larger words.
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Thanks! … maybe worth a bit of clarification in the description? Is it correct that using 皮 for human skin sounds strange in most routine contexts?
I’ll bring this up to the team to see if we want to add a clarification to this word!
-Nick at WK
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