So I’ve come across the kanji 市立 in Wanikani, which means municipal and can be used for many places like libraries, universities, etc. However, I am also doing Genki and looking back over the vocab from book 1 and noticed municipal hospital is 市民病院. I was curious why it’s 市民病院 and not 市立病院 instead?
Thank you for any help!
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It’s just a different expression. There are also 市立病院. The word 市民 has more of a focus on the people, citizenry, than the town or city as an entity.
As you make your way through the world of language studying, you’ll find all kinds of situations where there’s more than one possible expression, or not everything can be matched 1:1 between languages.
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Yeah I definitely understand there is more than one way to express something. I just wasn’t sure if in this instance there was a special reason for it. But it seems as though both are acceptable. Thank you for explaining.
I don’t have Genki to look at, but I’m guessing the thought process went
We have a text for this chapter > what are the vocab words in the text > list them out > one of them is 市民病院 > what should be translate that as > how about “municipal hospital” (there are other options as well)
For WaniKani it was
We have the kanji 市 > we need vocab for it > 市立 is a common word > the main gloss for that is “municipal”
So, I’d say it’s not that Genki set out to define the best word to express “municipal hospital”, they just happened to have a word that could be translated that way.
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