I thought grain didn’t include corn or rice either, so I guess I should learn what grain means in my own language first lol. I still think it’s more close to grain than wheat though, or there can just be grain as a synonym.
Not like this is anything more than an extremely minor problem though.
I made the same mistake so it seems that it’s not uncommon to think so.
It is interesting how the same word gets different perceptions.
If you search on Google images, Spanish and Portuguese seem pretty decided on including even beans as grains, English however seems to stick more to the wheat-ish image, indeed (although corn does appear frequently enough.)
I guess I’ve always thought of 麦 as being for gluten containing grains, which are wheat, barley and rye. Spelt also contains gluten, but I can’t find any translation of it in Japanese. Oats technically don’t contain gluten, but it’s close enough for me (I’m trying not to go into a side discussion of cross contamination in oat processing). I have celiac disease, which is probably why I use this definition, because it tells me what I can’t eat.
Spelt is スペルト小麦, since it’s a specific species of the wheat genus (triticum).
There might be some cultural connection there with geography, maybe beans and other grains are grown more frequently in the Iberian peninsula so it becomes more associated with them. I bet we can thank the Midwest (Ohio) for the stronger occurrence of corn in English.
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