[Rant] Counting in Japanese is My Enemy
Let me explain. Normal counting is quite easy to master after some decent amount of practice is done.
Here is a list of basic numbers:
To formulate numbers between 11-99, is fairly simple. Such as, if you want to say 22 in Japanese you’d say, “2 tens and a 2” so 22 is, “にじゅうに” (ni-juu-ni) Or, ”二十二”. Simple right? That pattern is used for all numbers between 11-99, and the same pattern follows for counting 100s and 1000s. So, 238 would become ”にひゃくさんじゅうはち”(ni-hyaku-san-juu-hachi) Or,”二百三十八”. So that’s great and all, learning this I was fine with. But then, counters happened.
It is the ending of the number that is affected by the thing you are counting. In Japanese, there are MULTIPLE COUNTERS to learn. Granted, it could just be because of it being a new language I notice it a lot more, but I feel as though we have nothing like this in English. Now, not all counters are bad, like I can understand when counting ages, days of the week, dates, months, years, and time, because of course, we have that. I’m talking about the specific counters that are involved in counting people and things. You’re probably thinking by now, “Okay, well that doesn’t sound so bad.” And you are probably right, my problem is, …My ability to remember things is horrible. I had a heck of a time trying to remember all the different ways to express to wear things. Which yes, there are multiple ways to do that, it depends on what item of clothing and where on the body it goes. That’s a story for another time, I digress.
I’m obviously not a master of Japanese by any means, in fact, I’m only in my second year of learning it. So this whole counter thing, was news to me when it was first introduced in my text book. I know there are probably more counters, but I’m just going to address the ones that I’ve seen thus far. Those counters are:
こ（個）Ko used for small/round items
さつ（冊）Satsu used for books
ひき（匹）Hiki used for small animals, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians etc.
ほん（本）Hon used for long, thin objects (pencils, bottles, guitars etc.)
だい（台）Dai used for car, bicycles, machines, mechanical devices, household appliances.
まい（枚）Mai used for thin flat objects (paper, photographs plates, clothing etc.)
り、ひと（人）Ri or Hito used for counting people.
So some examples using a few of these counters would be,
To say, “I gave three new books to my friend”
You’d say, “私は友達に３冊の新しい本をあげました。”
（Watashi wa tomodachi ni sansatsu no atarashii hon wo agemashita.)
Or, if you wanted to say, “I have 2 dogs.”
You’d say, “私は犬を２匹飼っています”
（Watashi wa inu wo nihiki katteimasu.)
The counter is placed right after the number. It’s meant to be an indicator of the thing that you are counting. Though, I’m still not entirely sure why it’s needed, it is required that it is included in a sentence to be considered a grammatically correct sentence. This is what I struggled with when first learning this concept. In English we can simply say “3 books” or “2 dogs” we don’t need an indicator telling us what to expect at the end of the sentence. When this was first introduced in my class, everyone was questioning why we had to add the counter. In a lot of cases in Japanese, parts of their sentences can be omitted (such as the subject of the sentence), unlike in English, we HAVE to have the subject of the sentence.
For example when introducing yourself, in English usually we’d say something like,
“Hello, my name is Deanna.” Or “Hello, I’m Deanna”
In Japanese this would directly translate to, “こんにちは、私の名前はディアンナです。” （kon’nichiwa, Watashi no namae wa Deanna desu.) Or, ”こんにちは、私はディアンナです。” （Kon’nichiwa, Watashi wa Deanna desu.)
But in most cases people would omit saying “I” or ”私”(Watashi) so a lot of the time people will just say,
“こんにちは、ディアンナです。” (Kon’nichiwa, Deanna desu.)
So, in my mind, that raised the question, if you can omit something like that, and the sentence is still grammatically correct, then couldn’t you do the same thing with the counter as long as the noun that is being counted is still in the sentence?
The quick answer to this is simply, no, you can’t.
And to this I say, WHY, JAPANESE, WHY?
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