Wanikani taught me this kanji means “wheat”, and that’s it. But every time I’ve actually seen this kanji or the word “mugi” being used, it means “barley”… For example, the popular 麦茶 (which, to me, tastes quite horrible to be honest…). Also, Wiktionary tells me it also could be used for rye and oat……

I’m pretty sure they just thought since we’re all fellow American’s, we just think all grains are wheat. Solution: Add user definition grain. It is wrong, and those who don’t just think of all grains as wheat will be a little confused down the line, but it is relatively harmless among definitions.…

But what if you’re in a Japanese wheat/grain convention!! You’ll be embarrassed! Lol

Mm, well I kiiind of can understand that but still it feels like an unnecessary simplification of the word’s meaning. And I’m also wondering why the Japanese have only this one word for many different kinds of grains (although seems that it primarily means barley anyway), I would think they could di…

Wait, in American wheat/grain are synonymous? I never knew that, I would always see Wheat as a specific type of grain. Interesting!

The point with all of this is not to overload the user with meanings, especially at the kanji learning stage. Kanji will often only have 1 or 2 meanings and 1 or 2 readings at most to give the user a basic understanding of what that kanji means, which is then expanded through the vocabulary. Any ka…

[image] Asteroth: I’m pretty sure they just thought since we’re all fellow American’s How dare you :thinking::joy:

What happens with 麦 is exactly the same that happens with 豆(まめ), the word for beans. Of course 大豆 (soy)、小豆 (azuki)、枝豆 (edamame)、ひよこ豆 (chickpea)、レンズ豆 (lentil)、いんげん豆 (green bean?) are completely different things, with different color, shape, taste and size. But still, there is a catch-all term 豆 tha…

But if you write all of that explanation for every single term in the page, people will get frustrated. So they just used the most common 麦 (wheat) as the meaning. Seems fair to me.

Thank you!! That was an amazing explanation. I for one am definitely very interested in learning Japanese as actual Japanese and not just as some simplified English translations (if that makes sense), so for me it’s very interesting to get a deeper understanding of the etymology and meanings of all …

What's up with 麦?

Japanese Language

virgilmaro March 2, 2019, 11:55pm 7

Mugi is just a catch all term for all of those grains. There are specific Japanese words to differentiate barley, wheat and rye.

A lollipophuho said, it just keeps it simple to remember mugi as wheat. The kanji keywords are pretty arbitrary anyway.

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What's up with 麦?

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