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Grammar detail: counters for objects and other things
My current mastery of this grammar:
For counting actual objects as opposed to just expressing a number, Japanese uses a unique system of 'counters', terms which are placed after the number and which partially describe the object being counted.
For example,
まい
is the counter for flat objects such as sheets of paper, so to say 'five sheets of paper' in Japanese, you would say かみごまい
which literally means 'paper 5 flat objects'. While this seems unusual at first, and is often touted as a difficult feature of Japanese, we are actually doing exactly the same thing in English (five *sheets* of paper), but English is much less regular than Japanese.
Japanese has many counters, and the most common ones are:
| まい | flat objects such as paper or books | ||
| ほん | cylindrical or long objects such as bottles or chopsticks (note: this is a little confusing, since ほん means 'book' - it is *not* used to count books) | ||
| 冊 | さつ | books | |
| 人 | じん | people | |
| 匹 | ひき | small animals | |
| 回 | かい | number of times something happens | |
| 個 | こ | small round objects | |
| わ | birds | ||
| さい | years old / age (note that '20 years old' is irregular: 二十歳 is not read にじゅっさい as you would expect, but instead はたち) | ||
| 才| | さい | years old (note: this is commonly used, but not technically correct: 歳 is the correct counter) | |
| じょう | tatami mats (the typical way to measure the area of a room) | ||
| だい | cars and machines | ||
| ご | words | ||
| か月 | かげつ | months | |
| けん | buildings | ||
| つう | letters, telegrams etc | ||
| ぎょう | rows (in a document etc) | ||
| ばん | platforms (in a railway station etc) | ||
| かい | floors (in a building) | ||
| びん | (plane) flights | ||
| さつ | banknotes | ||
| きゃく | chairs, tables, legs (of chairs and tables etc) | ||
| こう | items (in a checklist); paragraphs | ||
| はく | nights (eg of a stay in a hotel) | ||
| せい | generations; monarchs (Elizabeth I etc) | ||
| とう | large animals, cattle | ||
| かん | volumes (eg books); reels (eg film) | ||
| ぶ | copies (eg of a publication) | ||
| 切れ | きれ | pieces of sashimi (literally 'cuts') | ひときれ、 ふたきれ、 みきれ、 よきれ、 ごきれ、 ろっきれ、 ななきれ、 はちきれ、 きゅうきれ、 じっきれ |
| ちゃく | suits of clothing | ||
| そく | pairs of shoes etc. | ||
| わり | tenths; lots of 10% | ||
| じ | children | ||
| つぶ | pills, tablets etc |
In Japanese, counters are known as
じょすうし
助数詞
.See also:
- Japanese numbers and counting
More information / references:
- https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/Grammar/Counters ⇗
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word ⇗
- https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-counters-list/ ⇗
Words used in this grammar
noun
1. piece; slice; strip; scrap2. cloth (also written as 布, 裂)
(click the word to view an additional 2 meanings)
3
5
TEST
Kanji used in this grammar
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