Boku no kami no ke wa sukunaku natte kiteiru

[andycarmenjapanese8100]

Kekkon shite kara boku no kami no ke wa sukunaku natte kiteiru.
"I've started losing my hair since I got married." (literally, "My hair is beginning to become less after my marriage.")

Initially I thought this "kami no ke" might be "hair's amount" or something but my dictionary says that "ke" actually means "hair." That's very confusing.

Can anybody help me make sense of this?

[mmmason8967]

I think the difference is that kami is when you think of your hair as a single item while kami no ke is when you think of your hair as a large collection of hairs. In this case you're talking about having fewer hairs on your head so you need kami no ke.

マイケル

[andycarmenjapanese8100]

That makes sense. Ta.

[thegooseking]

To round off マイケルさん's answer, ke on its own means a single hair.

Sumimasen, tabemono ni ke ga arimasu.
"Excuse me, there is a hair in my food."

小狼

[community.japanese]

Andy-san, マイケルsan, 子狼san,
kon'nichiwa

This is typical of Japanese language, perhaps.
It's not really the matter of "one hair" or collection of hair. We might not really think of
"difference" between those two.
There are several reasons why we use "kami no ke" over "kami" or just "ke".
1. The word "ke" is too short and difficult to catch.
2. The word "ke" can be hair of any of body parts.
3. The word "kami" has exactly the same sound with words meaning "up" (上), "paper" (紙) and "god" (神).
4. The word "ke" gives (somewhat) dirty image.
etc. etc.

Some people might use "kami" for more "hair style" or entire image and "kami no ke" for more its condition
or characteristics. However, in linguistic view, there's no such definitions.
There are several stories behind "kami no ke", and most of them have something to do with body parts or
old way of writings or meanings.

Hope this helps!

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com