体{からだ} and 身体{からだ} (or even 躰{からだ}) seem to be used interchangeably, is there a nuance difference between them?
Answer
In short:
- 体【からだ】: normal way to say "body".
- 身体【しんたい】: sounds more technical/academic/physical, and only mean the bodies of humans and large animals. Bodies of machines and robots are technically referred to as 筐体【きょうたい】.
- 身体【からだ】: another generally accepted way of writing "からだ" in kanji, and it's a 熟字訓. It's not taught at school, but virtually all Japanese people recognize this readings.
The difficult part is the difference between 体【からだ】 and 身体【からだ】. For example, which one of the following is the better way to say "Take care of yourself?"
お体【からだ】を大事にしてください。
お身体【からだ】を大事にしてください。
It seems that there is no single answer here. Yahoo! Chiebukuro has at least three questions about this (link A, link B, link C), and different answers were accepted as the best answer.
And the number of Google results:
- お体を大事に: 794,000
- お身体を大事に: 346,000
- お体を大切に: 160,000
- お身体を大切に: 1,210,000
- 体を休める: 4,700,000 (may include the results of 身体を休める)
- 身体を休める: 2,180,000
My personal choice was 体【からだ】, because I felt 身体【からだ】 is used mainly in novels and lyrics. But now I'm aware that there are many people who prefer 身体【からだ】 in such cases. After all, I seems to me that both of 体【からだ】 and 身体【からだ】 are equally OK as long as you're using this to human body, and as long as you're not writing something for dictionaries or news media.
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