# Wear: kiru, haku



## theartofbreath

I'm a fairly new student to the Japanese language and my question is regarding the pattern of using one "wear" verb to describe multiple articles of clothing worn. 

In Rosetta Stone it uses the following example...

Onnanohito wa shiroi shatsu to aoi jiinzu o kite imasu.
(The woman is wearing a white shirt and blue jeans.)

My question is this: is "kite imasu" used because "shiroi shatsu" comes first in the sentence?

if i were wanting to say...

Onnanohito wa aoi jiinzu to shiroi shatsu o haite imasu.

Would this be correct?

I know "Kite" is to wear above the waist and "haite" is below... does it matter which verb you would use to describe both?

Domo Arigato


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## SpiceMan

Hmm, yes it matters. When there are several possibilities kiru has... hmm, higher "precedence"?

Anyway, sounds odd with hairu, and it doesn't matter which kind of clothes come first in the sentence.


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## Flaminius

*EDIT: This post is flawed.  Please fast-forward to #5 for a better answer.*

Hello,

First of all, welcome to the WordReference forums!  I hope you will have a lot of fun besides learning here.  



> Onnanohito wa aoi jiinzu to shiroi shatsu o haite imasu.


This is perfectly OK.  Replacing _haite_ with _kite_ makes a very bad sentence.  Looks like there is a mistake in your study material.



> I know "Kite" is to wear above the waist and "haite" is below... does it matter which verb you would use to describe both?


Do you mean what verb you'd use when you wear a hat and trousers, for instance?  I'd do my best to prevent a verb from taking both as objects.  

赤い帽子に、白いチノパンをはいた男の子


As a side note, I find the conclusive form more fitting as citation forms than _te_-forms.  The conclusive form is what dictionaries use as a head word for verbs.  Thus, you should search for _kiru_ and _haku_ when looking them up in a dictionary.


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## theartofbreath

Thank you very much for the warm welcome and the response.

It's a bummer to think Rosetta might be flawed in some way.
is it possible that the sentence


* Onnanohito wa shiroi shatsu to aoi jiinzu o kite imasu.

*might have a different contextual meaning that I'm not understanding?


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## Flaminius

Oh, I am mistaken.  

I thought they were talking about jeans and shoes (_kutsu_) while it was in fact jeans and a shirt (_shatsu_).  My post above IS flawed, not your course...



> Onnanohito wa aoi jiinzu to shiroi shatsu o haite imasu.


This is wrong because the sentence would make _shatsu_ the direct object of _haku_ (or to wear something through/on one's legs).

Now, back to the original sentence.


> Onnanohito wa shiroi shatsu to aoi jiinzu o kite imasu.


Personally, I am not overly enchanted with the original sentence because ジーンズを着る sounds awkward.  I have mentioned how I would deal with similar cases.  Yet there seem to be enough citations in Google search results* to assume that _kiru_ is a more general verb than _haku_ for many legitimate usages.

Evidence to the generality of _kiru_ can be found in derivatives too.  A word for garments (excepting shoes) is _kiru-mono_ or things to wear.  This term includes all clothings that cover one's naked body.  That shoes are not considered as garments or a bear foot as nudity may be accounted for by cultural, traditional and climatic reasons.  In older speech styles, _kimono_ means a general garnment but it is mostly used to mean traditional Japanese clothings nowadays.

The verb _haku_ is so closely associated with feet that I cannot imagine applying the verb to a shirt, hat or a belt.

*I searched for ジーンズを着る (to wear jeans) and スーツを着る (to wear a suit) as a comparison.  The searches have retrieved 111,000 and 411,000 instances of the respective queried phrases.  Assuming no reason to believe that one phrase is more susceptible than the other to factors that skew the results, I conclude that ジーンズを着る is in the same order of frequency as スーツを着る.  As a final contrast, 靴を着る (to wear shoes) and スニーカーを着る (to wear sneekers) turn up only 61 and 7 times.  These figures coincide with my impression that they are downright wrong.


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## theartofbreath

Okay, that answers my question.  Thanks for your thorough response.


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## kknd

It's something else:
はく _haku_ means wearing something put from down to up (boots or pants/skirts, etc.)
きる _kiru_ means wearing something put from up to down (shirts, kimono, etc.)

First verb can also mean: to attach sword to one's hip or bowstring on a bow.
Don't mess second with other verb きる _kiru_ (deflected in other way) meaning 'cut'.


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## Flaminius

Hello *kknd*,

I wasn't aware of the bowstring sense until I read this entry.  It is an interesting discovery but far more obsolete than the sword sense, which often turns up in samurai novels.

Here is an interesting essay on the historical development of _haku_.


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## kknd

Good to know I was helpful! (unwillingly )
Thanks for your texts, now I'll have to study them a bit, because I'm not able to read Japanese fluently yet...


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## futaro

Please, what is the difference between "kite" and "haite"?

Ex.:

Kare wa aoi shatsu wo kite imasu

and  kanojo wa sukaato wo haite imasu.

Thank you for your help.


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## sekaijuuni

着る _kiru_ is used for clothing worn above the waist.  This excludes hats (which you　冠る・被る	_kaburu_), glasses (which you 掛ける　_kakeru_), and accessories (which you する　suru).

入る　_hairu_ is used for clothing worn below the waist, including shoes.

Also, I'm pretty sure that you'd write all of these in hiragana rather than kanji, except for _kiru _and_ hairu.

_


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## Noamoxkaltontli

Actually, its haku, not hairu 

From jim breen's dictionary:

履く(P); 佩く; 穿く; 着く; 帯く 【はく】 (v5k,vt) (1) (usu 履く or 穿く) to put on (or wear) lower-body clothing (i.e. pants, skirt, etc.); to put on (or wear) footwear;

Edit: spelling.


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## futaro

Thank you very much to you both.


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## Noamoxkaltontli

Oh, I see. My bad


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