When is 酒【さけ】used to mean 日本酒【にほんしゅ】?


The fermented rice alcohol called "sake" in English is usually referred to as
日本酒【にほんしゅ】 in Japanese, while 酒【さけ】 merely means "alcohol" in general.

Yet, all dictionaries list both "alcohol" and "fermented rice
alcohol/sake/nihonshu" as translations for the word 酒.

Lately, I have noticed 酒 used a few times in movies to mean "nihonshu"
specifically (e.g. with one character ordering a beer, and another ordering
"sake").

I imagine the use of 酒 for "sake" was the standard in ancient times (and only
evolved after the introduction of other popular alcoholic beverages), but can
anybody tell me if there is any _modern_ context where it is still commonly
used? In such a case, would it be more or less formal?

**Edit:** Yuji's answer below also made me realise that the use of the polite
form (お酒) might play a role in differentiating the two senses (?)




I think this is somewhat equivalent to ご飯、which was also confusing enough to
warrant [some](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/901/since-
japanese-already-had-several-words-for-rice-why-was-raisu-borrowed)
[questions](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/858/whats-the-
difference-between-gohan-and-meshi) (admittedly, non of them about the dual
meaning of the word, but the issue became prominent in both threads).

In essence, you can say that ご飯 generally means _a meal_ , but can also have
the more specific meaning of _cooked rice_. This more specific meaning also
serves as a default meaning of sorts: depending on the context, you may assume
ご飯 specifically refers to cooked rice.

In the same way, (お)酒 may mean alcoholic beverages in general (equivalent to
the English 'booze', except that the latter is very informal) or 日本酒 as its
default more specific meaning.

This is not an uncommon phenomenon at all. A few decades ago (and to some
degree, it's still true today), 'tea' generally meant any beverage made by
extracting the flavor of tea leaves, but the default meaning was black tea. If
you wanted a cup of green tea or oolong tea, you'd usually have to explicitly
ask for it - otherwise you'd just get black tea (and with an atrocious heapful
of sugar at that :)). In Japan, on the other hand, the default meaning of (お)茶
was (and probably still is) 緑茶, that is green tea.

This is all very culturally dependent, and rather easy to explain, though
there are some cases where such a 'default meaning' doesn't have much to do
with culture. I can't think of English or Japanese examples for such cases,
unfortunately. :(




It is perfectly normal to use お酒 in modern context.

In English you don't often say "Let's drink alcohol," but in Japanese it's
perfectly normal to say "一緒にお酒を飲みましょう" (i.e. let's drink alcohol together.) In
this case お酒 can stand for any type of alcoholic beverages.

For example, we often see public signs saying "お酒は二十歳になってから" (drinking alcohol
is after you become 20 years old.)

Furthermore, if you have specific intention to drink beer or wine, I guess we
say "ビールにしましょう" or "ワインにしましょう", so there's a good chance if I say お酒をのみましょう it
means we end up drinking 日本酒。

