| Have you ever wondered about... |
Counting in Japanese? |
Part I
Source Information: http://www.japaneselearning.com
Anecdotal
By Emy Murakawa
Being born and raised as a Nisei, most of my friends consider me fairly fluent in Japanese, although I have always known that my Japanese was truly more child-like because of my American schooling and not having attended Japanese school. Some of the examples that come to mind are quite funny. For instance, I remember someone saying “samui gohan” for cold rice. There are several words for “cold” in Japanese: tsumetai, hiyai, and samui are among them. However, samui is a sensory cold (like when the weather is cold or when you are shivering and cold). Can’t you just visualize the gohan shivering!?
But, I think counting is one of the most interesting differences for me. This came up the other day as I was trying to tell my mother how often she could take some medication. I was trying to tell her that she could take it every four hours, up to six times a day. I said, “yojikan oki, roppen made.” Now, to my mother’s credit, she always appreciates my efforts to speak to her in Japanese and never criticizes me. I don’t know if it is conscious on her part, but how I learn that I have misspoken is that she will say it back to me correctly by way of confirmation. So, there I am reading the label and telling her, “yojikan oki, roppen made,” thinking I’m telling her “every four hours up to six times,” and she says back to me, ”ichinichi ni rokkai made, neh?” which I understood to mean “up to six times in one day.” This got me to thinking about counting. So I asked her what the difference was between “roppen” and “rokkai” – both of which connote six times to me. Do you know?
As English speakers, most Americans learn to count in a few ways: cardinal numbers: one, two, three, etc.; ordinal numbers: first, second, third, etc.; and frequency: once, twice, three times, etc. If you are born and raised in Japan, you grow up learning all the different ways of counting by context, and often the Japanese-speaking natives, including my mother, will not always be able to explain why one way is used over another. However, in this case, after a few moments of thought, she came up with this: both mean “six times,” but “roppen” means “six times,” and “rokkai” means “six times” in a cycle or period of time. Anyway, this got me thinking about counting in general.
Undoubtedly, this is a Cultural Corner topic that will be quite long, so I will be presenting it in installments. The VJCC webmaster, Don Nishimoto, has been uploading these pieces to the website, so hopefully, when this is done, you will be able to go see this topic in its entirety. In the meantime, I will try to present it in as meaningful chapters as I can.
Let me preface the following table with an editorial observation. The new romaji (phonetic representation of Japanese words) has changed since I was young. Chi is now represented by ti, shi is now represented by si, tsu is now represented by tu, etc. I have not successfully converted to the new romaji, much to my chagrin when I try to read e-mails from my cousin. In any case, please keep this in mind if you find some inconsistencies in these tables. To add to the confusion, for some of us old-schoolers, there is actually a difference in pronunciation between ku and kyu (both “nine”) and ju and jyu (both “ten”). As you will learn from future discussion, this has to do with how words sound, aurally, and will just have to be learned during usage and in context.
Cardinal Numbers
1 ichi 1,000 sen 10,000 man 100,000 jyuman (literally, 10 man) 1,000,000 hyakuman (literally, 100 man) = one million 10,000,000 senman (literally, 1,000 man) = 10 million 100,000,000 ichioku (100 million!) |
Ordinal Numbers
1 ichiban 8 hachiban |
Counting limited numbers of generic objects
1 hitotsu 11 jyuichi
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I think I was often “safe” in my ignorance, because I tended to use the more general counter that works for up to ten items: 1 – hitotsu; 2 – futatsu; 3 – mittsu; 4 – yottsu; 5 – itsutsu; 6 – muttsu; 7 – nanatsu; 8 – yattsu; 9 – kokonotsu; 10 – jyu or to. Being in a Japanese-speaking family, I got a few without even being aware – using mai for thin, flat items (paper, cloth, plates, etc.) or using pon for slender or stick items (chopsticks, pencils, trees, etc.), but it’s funny the things I didn’t get. When people used to ask how old I was, I used this same way to tell my age. So, when my children were born, I used the same numbers to tell their ages as well.
Through my children’s activities, I made some wonderful friends who were native Japanese speakers, and speaking just enough Japanese to have casual conversation with them, I was able to glean something through osmosis. One of the first was the counting of age! I learned that asking “how old” was “nansai,” and that “-sai” was the proper suffix. The other tidbit was the counting of pieces of things – Yasuko and Atsuko would frequently say “ikko” or some-other-number-ko, and my mind would immediately jump to “children.” Now, contextually, it made no sense at all, so that’s how I learned that”-ko” meant piece!
This presents basic counting. In the next Cultural Corner, you will see a chart into which I will attempt to organize some of the Japanese “counters,” and we’ll continue from there. I hope you will find the companion piece informative.
By Gail Sharp
September Photo
Everyone has one more month to submit some information about the September photo!
Send your comments to talkstory@vjcc.com with "September Talk Story" as the subject.
May Photo
| It appears that we have a full line-up for the 1961 CYC Braves that were featured in the May 2007 Talk Story. Kneeling from left to right are: Roger Yano, Gerald Yamashita, Randy Hamashita, Reggie Benigno, Norman Kumagai and Coach Toll Okazaki. Standing from left to right are: Steve Kunzer, Alan Kosaka, Eric Sasaki, Steve Okazaki, Steve Oba and Wade Hojo. Thank you to Mrs. Fusaye Kosaka for providing the missing names! |  |