Comment by greggman3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by greggman3 | Hacker News Reader

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ippon, nihon, and ippiki, nihiki are numbers with counter units added (different from hitori, futari). Counter units exist in English. It's common to say "I have 600 head of cattle" vs "I have 600 cattle". "600 head of cattle" is exactly the same in Japanese, "牛６００頭". The counters in Japanese are also often similar to the way we use the words in English. You don't say "I have 12 wines". You say "I have 12 bottles of wine". "12 bottles of wine" is very similar to "ワイン１２本”. I think "5 loaves of bread" also fits. You'd never say "I have 5 breads". You have to say "I have 5 loaves of bread"

I get there's a subtle difference but it's not that far off. We also say "I have 6 meters of rope". "meters" is the counting unit, which is the same concept as all the Japanese counting units.

As for the onomatopoeias, at some point you get used to them and they feel like they fit and you can start to pick them up without having them explained. Even the ones that don't seem like the make a sound, start to make a sound, at least in my mind once I've internalized it.

Not the same but in some sense similar, dogs don't say "bark" but with enough repetition many people perceive "bark" instead of the actual sound the small dog is making.

I think the difference (and what makes Japanese harder in this case) is that you can't stumble into the correct number suffix for a large number of mundane nouns. For example, "12 bottles of wine" uses words that are used in other contexts ("bottles", "wine"), so if you mash these English words together, you get a proper sentence that doesn't sound weird. This is because you have to use "bottles" to provide context. In Japanese, you have to know about the rule even to say "botoru wa ippon" ("one bottle"); "botoru wa ichi" stands out as broken Japanese as much as saying "me likes".

There's nothing context-wise that suggests one is supposed to suffix "hon/pon" (lit. "Book") when you're counting carrots, while tomatoes are counted with "hitotsu, futatsu". The rule for flat things is to suffix "mai", but while postcards are "ichimai, nimai", magazines are "hitotsu, futatsu" and pamphlets are "isatsu, nisatsu". Having to remember these seemingly arbitrary rules as a Japanese learner is often considered a bewildering experience.

Nitpicks follow. Tomatoes are counted in 個 (ko). The counter 本 for carrots and other things does not mean book in that context. The character just also means book, but has other meanings. Both magazines and pamphlets are counted in 冊(satsu) or 部(bu).

I agree there are more counters in Japanese. I'm just pointing out the concept exists in English. Another example is "I have 6 pairs of pants and 7 pairs of socks" is the same in Japanese. 足 as a counter means pair so "靴下７足" is 7 pairs of socks (14 individual socks). You wouldn't say "I have 14 socks" in English. You say "I have 7 pairs of socks".

IIRC 冊＝ bindings (very similar to the concept of pairs of socks, we have bindings of paper). So you count "sheets of paper" (枚）and "bindings of books" (冊）.

All I'm saying is there are lots of place in English were without a counting unit it's often awkward or ungrammatical. I agree it takes take some getting used to all the counters though and even Japanese have trouble with it as there's a game you play where you call out a thing and the next per says that thing +1 +the counter.

Example player 1: "Apple", Player 2 "apple ik-ko. banana", Player 3 "banana nip-pon. car", Player 4 "car yon dai. house", Player 5: "House go-ken" Player 5 might have just gotten that wrong and then everyone would laugh.

To me the most annoying thing about Japanese counters is not so much that there are so many, but that you also have to remember when the numbers that go with them will need on-yomi or kun-yomi (ichi, ni... vs. hito, futa...) (well, okay, that essentially depends on the counter itself being on or kun. Makes me wonder if there are jūbako-yomi or yutō-yomi cases, never looked it up). And if that wasn't enough you also need to remember when e.g. いち becomes いっ and when a h becomes a b or a p (ippon, nihon, sanbon...)

Edit: and there are the fun cases where it's not always on or kun: ichinichi, futsuka... or other fun exceptions.

I'd stick to the common ones, you don't need to learn them all.

Whether you want it or not, you'll end up encountering them, not necessarily with enough context to tell you what they are. Example from regular news: 1000軒停電.1000世帯停電.1000戸停電.(and they all point to something slightly different)

Of course, it depends what you use Japanese for.

Yes, it does depend. My recommendation would still be to follow up with what I said and master the common ones used for basic conversation first. Then work on the rarer ones that pop up in the news or when you're renting apartments or whatever.

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