Numbers and counting in Japanese are difficult enough to require its own section. First of all, the number system is in units of four instead of three, which can make converting into English quite difficult. Also, there are things called counters, which are required to count different types of objects, animals, or people. We will learn the most generic and widely used counters to get you started so that you can learn more on your own. To be honest, counters might be the only thing that’ll make you want to quit learning Japanese, it’s that bad. I recommend you digest only a little bit of this section at a time because it’s an awful lot of things to memorize.<\/p>\n
The Japanese number system is spread into units of four. So a number such as 10,000,000 is actually split up as 1000,0000. However, thanks to the strong influence of the Western world and the standardization of numbers, when numbers are actually written, the split-off is three digits. Here are the first ten numbers.<\/p>\n
| 1<\/td>\n | 2<\/td>\n | 3<\/td>\n | 4<\/td>\n | 5<\/td>\n | 6<\/td>\n | 7<\/td>\n | 8<\/td>\n | 9<\/td>\n | 10<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| \u4e00<\/span><\/td>\n | \u4e8c<\/span><\/td>\n | \u4e09<\/span><\/td>\n | \u56db<\/span><\/td>\n | \u4e94<\/span><\/td>\n | \u516d<\/span><\/td>\n | \u4e03<\/span><\/td>\n | \u516b<\/span><\/td>\n | \u4e5d<\/span><\/td>\n | \u5341<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n| \u3044\u3061<\/span><\/td>\n | \u306b<\/span><\/td>\n | \u3055\u3093<\/span><\/td>\n | \u3057<\/span>\uff0f\u3088\u3093<\/span><\/td>\n | \u3054<\/span><\/td>\n | \u308d\u304f<\/span><\/td>\n | \u3057\u3061<\/span>\uff0f\u306a\u306a<\/span><\/td>\n | \u306f\u3061<\/span><\/td>\n | \u304d\u3085\u3046<\/span><\/td>\n | \u3058\u3085\u3046<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n | As the chart indicates, 4 can either be \u300c\u3057<\/span>\u300d or \u300c\u3088\u3093<\/span>\u300d and 7 can either be \u300c\u3057\u3061<\/span>\u300d or \u300c\u306a\u306a<\/span>\u300d. Basically, both are acceptable up to 10. However, past ten, the reading is almost always \u300c\u3088\u3093<\/span>\u300d and \u300c\u306a\u306a<\/span>\u300d. In general, \u300c\u3088\u3093<\/span>\u300d and \u300c\u306a\u306a<\/span>\u300d are preferred over \u300c\u3057<\/span>\u300d and \u300c\u3057\u3061<\/span>\u300d in most circumstances.<\/p>\n You can simply count from 1 to 99 with just these ten numbers. Japanese is easier than English in this respect because you do not have to memorize separate words such as “twenty” or “fifty”. In Japanese, it’s simply just “two ten” and “five ten”.<\/p>\n Notice that numbers are either always written in kanji or numerals because hiragana can get rather long and hard to decipher.<\/p>\n Here are the higher numbers:<\/p>\n Notice how the numbers jumped four digits from 10^4 to 10^8 between \u4e07<\/span> and \u5104<\/span>? That’s because Japanese is divided into units of four. Once you get past 1\u4e07 (10,000), you start all over until you reach 9,999\u4e07, then it rotates to 1\u5104<\/span> (100,000,000). By the way, \u767e<\/span> is 100 and \u5343<\/span> is 1,000, but anything past that, and you need to attach a 1 so the rest of the units become \u4e00\u4e07<\/span> (10^4)\u3001\u4e00\u5104<\/span> (10^8)\u3001\u4e00\u5146<\/span> (10^12).<\/p>\n Now you can count up to 9,999,999,999,999,999 just by chaining the numbers same as before. This is where the problems start, however. Try saying \u300c\u3044\u3061\u3061\u3087\u3046\u300d \u3001\u300c\u308d\u304f\u3072\u3083\u304f\u300d\u3001or \u300c\u3055\u3093\u305b\u3093\u300d really quickly, you’ll notice it’s difficult because of the repetition of similar consonant sounds. Therefore, Japanese people have decided to make it easier on themselves by pronouncing them as \u300c\u3044\u3063\u3061\u3087\u3046<\/span>\u300d\u3001 \u300c\u308d\u3063\u3074\u3083\u304f<\/span>\u300d\u3001and \u300c\u3055\u3093\u305c\u3093<\/span>\u300d. Unfortunately, it makes it all the harder for you to remember how to pronounce everything. Here are all the slight sound changes.<\/p>\n Notice that it is customary to write large numbers only in numerals as even kanji can become difficult to decipher.<\/p>\n Zero in Japanese is \u300c\u96f6<\/span>\u300d but \u300c\u30bc\u30ed<\/span>\u300d or \u300c\u30de\u30eb<\/span>\u300d is more common in modern Japanese. There is no special method for reading decimals, you simply say \u300c\u70b9<\/span>\u300d for the dot and read each individual number after the decimal point. Here’s an example:<\/p>\n For negative numbers, everything is the same as positive numbers except that you say \u300c\u30de\u30a4\u30ca\u30b9<\/span>\u300d first.<\/p>\n Ah, and now we come to the fun part. In Japanese, when you are simply counting numbers, everything is just as you would expect, \u4e00<\/span>\u3001\u4e8c<\/span>\u3001\u4e09<\/span>\u3001 and so on. However, if you want to count any type of object, you have to use something called a counter which depends on what type of object you are counting and on top of this, there are various sound changes similar to the ones we saw with \u516d\u767e<\/span>, etc.. The counter themselves are usually single kanji characters that often have a special reading just for the counter. First, let’s learn the counters for dates<\/p>\n |