Do the Slavic languages you are familiar with have different words for the hand and foot, or are the words ruka and noga (or something similar) used for the entire limb without a different word commonly used for hand and foot?
*there is also an archaic word pesnica (and an even more archaic pest) 'fist', cognate to English fist. Some derivations, used (at least according to my intuition, I don't remember using them in everyday conversation) largely in medicine, include pešće 'carpus', zapešće 'metacarpus'.
In Serbian it is ris (рис). It is the upper part of the foot and the upper part of the shoe, too.I don't think we have a name for the upper part of the foot...
The English is somewhat imprecise in this respect, because technically the arm is a part of the hand between the shoulder and the elbow, then there is a forearm and then the palm. However the common usage differs and the word "hand" can be used for the palm and the arm - for the whole hand, especially in common phrases and collocations.Do the Slavic languages you are familiar with have different words for the hand and foot, or are the words ruka and noga (or something similar) used for the entire limb without a different word commonly used for hand and foot?
You can put it that way, yes.As far as I know, all languages have separate words (they obviously need them, at least in the field of medicine!) but there is a general tendency to use "leg" and "arm" for everything.
In Russian there's, in fact, a similar (or even worse) problem with the words плечо (plechó) and бедро (bedró). In the normal language, плечо means a shoulder, but in the anatomical sense it's an arm (as opposed to a forearm). And бедро means both a thigh and a hip (only a thigh in the narrow anatomical sense, though).The English is somewhat imprecise in this respect, because technically the arm is a part of the hand between the shoulder and the elbow, then there is a forearm and then the palm.
Yeah, колено (koléno) is annoyingly polysemantic. And it seems the same was true for локоть (lókot'); while now it normally means "elbow", old dictionaries (as well as the well-known historical unit of length) also indicate the meaning "forearm".It was a surprise to me to discover the English word "lap" (sitting or lying on someone's lap; laptop) while, in Russian, it is "on someone's knees" ("на коленях"), which is, I guess, pretty ridiculous itself because the actual knee surface is too small to sit on.
Yes, I remember it now! This word comes up in a conversation so rarely that I've forgotten it...In Serbian it is ris (рис). It is the upper part of the foot and the upper part of the shoe, too.
And thus it would be very uncomfortable for both persons. ;-)It was a surprise to me to discover the English word "lap" (sitting or lying on someone's lap; laptop) while, in Russian, it is "on someone's knees" ("на коленях"), which is, I guess, pretty ridiculous itself because the actual knee surface is too small to sit on.