TYJ Japanese counters

5.3. Counters

5.3.1. Basic counters

To count things in Japanese, you cannot put nouns immediately after a number. Counters, which are added after numbers, are necessary. Do you think it is strange? English also has some counters for nouns representing things that cannot be counted as discrete objects. For instance, you would say two cups of coffee, ten pieces of paper, and fifty head of cattle. Japanese nouns resemble English abstract nouns.

There are three basic counters in Japanese.


Before counting things with counters, I'd like to introduce the genitive marker の "no", which is similar to the English suffixes and the English word of. The word の is a postposition, which is a suffix to add a grammatical function to a noun. Postpositions are similar to prepositions, but the order of words are opposite as the name implies. The order of words for の is the same as that for 's, so A's B is the same as A の B, and A of B is the same as B の A.

It is important to know that phrases that add information to the main phrase are always placed before the main phrase in Japanese. This is a consistent rule with no exception. Linguists call it head-last. English is a head-first language, where the main phrase is placed before additional phrases, but it is not so consistent as Japanese. That-clauses and preposition phrases are good examples of the head-first rule of English; both a dog that is white and a dog with white hair are dogs. But adjectives break the rule because they are placed before the main phrase. A white dog is a kind of dog, not a kind of whiteness.

Let's get back to の. Here is an example:


Japanese doesn't care much about the singular, plural, definite, or indefinite so that the example can mean any combination of either a cat, the cat, cats, or the cats and either an ear, the ear, ears, or the ears. Anyway, the phrase means a kind of ear, because of the head-last rule.

Now that you know の, you can count things with counters.
Put の after counters like this:


Since cats are animals, the counter for cats is ひき "hiki". The Japanese word for three is さん "san". The euphonic change rules of small numbers are applied to counters, so the "san" changes "h" in the "hiki" into "b". The result is さんばき "sanbiki".

The counter にん "nin" is not used for counting a person or two. There are other words for one person and two people.




Example:


Note: If a language has counters for general nouns, it doesn't have genders and vice versa. Both counters and genders are ways of categorising nouns, and they don't coexist. East Asian languages and Native American languages often have counters, and other languages often have genders. English is a rare language that has neither of them.

Further readings:

• Re: grammar of "no"

5.3.2. Traditional numbers

Japanese has another set of number names from the ones I explained in the small numbers chapter. They are the original number names of Japanese but were replaced by the new ones, most of which were imported from Chinese more than a thousand years ago. Now they are used only for counting inanimates, and treated as combinations of a digit and the inanimate counter こ "ko". The traditional numbers are often used to count abstract things.


The ancient Japanese numbers larger than ten were almost lost. Notice that the special human counter for one person ひとり "hitori" and that for two people ふたり "hutari" are similar to the traditional number for one ひとつ "hitotu" and that for two ふたつ "hutatu". In fact, り "ri" was a human counter in ancient Japanese. The last つ "tu" in the traditional number names was an inanimate counter, but modern native Japanese speakers don't feel a boundary between a digit name and つ because they are too old.

You may notice that two number names are similar when one is twice the other such as 1 and 2 (ひとつ "hitotu" and ふたつ "hutatu"), 3 and 6 (むっつ "mittu" and むっつ "muttu"), and 4 and 8 (よっつ "yottu" and やっつ "yattu"). If you find a language that has this kind of number name pairs, it will suggest a relationship to ancient Japanese. Linguists are still looking for the origin of Japanese; some say it came from Korea, some say from west Pacific islands, and some say even from south India.

A few ancient words for larger numbers survive in modern Japanese as shown below, but they are used only for a person's age and Japanese people rarely know they were numbers.

5.3.3. Additional counters

The three basic counters you have just learned are not all counters Japanese has. Here is a list of important additional counters.

Animate


Inanimate


Don't be afraid of many counters, because counters are not so strict as genders. Using the additional counters is better for the subcategories listed above, but using the three basic counters is always understandable.

The subcategories for the additional counters are not strict. Are sheep large animals? In fact, both とう "tô" and ひき "hiki" work fine in this case. Penguins are counted with わ "wa" because they are birds, but some people use ひき "hiki" for them because they don't fly.

Examples:

5.3.4. Continuum counters

A continuum, which cannot be measured by an integer only, always needs appropriate units in Japanese just as in English. Length is a good example of the continuum because it cannot be measured without using a unit, and it can have a decimal value. Japan uses the metric system for scientific values. Most metric units are written with katakana because they are imported words.

Length:


Mass:


Volume:


Temperature:


Currencies:


Example:

5.3.5. Euphonic change

I have explained the euphonic change rules of small numbers, and they are also used for counters. Even though counting things without using the rules is understandable, memorising the following charts will help you speak natural Japanese.




Further readings:

• Re: counters
• The counter prefix ka