If you’ve studied Japanese for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed that Japanese has many homophones, which are words that sound the same but have different meanings. Generally you can tell them apart from context (and there are also differences in intonation to help differentiate depending on the region, as well as kanji representation), but nevertheless they can frustrate learners who are struggling to pick up basic vocabulary and grammar.
When I looked at the calendar I realized I haven’t done any word meaning posts in awhile, so I wanted to write about a certain set of these homophones.
One of the most well-known ones is “hashi” （はし）, which has three meanings:
- Chopsticks (箸)
- Bridge (橋)
- Edge (端)
It turns out there is an interesting traditional story about the origin of these that isn’t very well-known in the west that I learned about sometime back, and I wanted to talk about that in this post. This tale is said to be from several thousand years ago.
Japan is a land of many rivers, and as such bridges have been important in Japan as long back as recorded history exists. That’s why “bridge” was apparently the first common meaning of “hashi”. The interesting thing is how these other two meanings came into existence.
Chopsticks too have been an important part of Japanese culture for thousands of years, however ages ago, depending on the region a different word was used. But one day after a massive fire raged in a city, the majority of the chopsticks in that city were burned to a crisp (along with most of the trees), and as you can imagine people didn’t want to eat with their hands.
Fortunately, there was a large bridge within walking distance of that village, and someone had the idea of breaking off a piece of wood from the bridge and then cutting the wood just right so it could be used as a chopstick. Hence the second meaning “chopstick” was born for “hashi”. Also, since the edge of the bridge was the part initially used, “edge” also became a tertiary meaning.
Over the next hundred years or so this city grew and became one of the largest in Japan, and as its inhabitants spread out over the country these meanings became commonplace.
Pretty nice story, huh?
Well, to tell the truth this is a story I crafted up for April-fools day. I hope you enjoyed it (:
While the part about the word origins was made up, the fact “hashi” is used for those three meanings (plus the part about kanji and intonation differences) is true. In practice there are other ways to differentiate these, like for example chopsticks is often pronounced as “ohashi”, and edge can be said with the word “hashikko”. There are also other words to express “edge” (“fuchi”, etc.) and bridge (“tekkyou” = iron bridge) that can help differentiate.
Despite its historical inaccuracy, I hope that this quirky tale helps you remember the three meanings of “hashi”.
If you want to see another similar of mine, please check out this.
Haha, very good!