We saw together the hiragana, the katakana, the kanji and the rōmaji. We have yet to see the latest Japanese writing system : the arabiasūji. Like rōmaji which is the name given to the Latin alphabet, arabiasūji is the Japanese name given to Arabic numerals. In « arabiasūji », you have « arabia » for « arabic » and « sūji » which means « the numbers ». Well, that, I think you guessed it already, was pretty easy to understand.
Before you start, it should be clear to your mind that arabiasūji is a separate writing system that has nothing to do with the Latin alphabet. We Westerners learn the Latin alphabet and the numbers at the same time so many people say that arabiasūji is the same thing as the Latin alphabet. But not at all !
The Roman alphabet is made up of letters, consonants and vowels which also represent sounds and which we want together to form words. A very simple example. Let’s take the letters « a », « n », « i », « m », « a », « l », that gives us the word « animal ». However, Arabic numbers are not at all the same thing. If we take the 1, the 2 and the 3, when we put them together like this, 123, we don’t pronounce « onetwothree » but « one hundred and twenty-three ».
In fact, the position of the figure in the number will give it its value. In the number 123, the three are the units, the 2 is the tens, the 1 is the hundreds. You know that, but think about it, this is a different writing system from our Latin alphabet. This is why it is better to consider it as a writing system different from our Latin alphabet, and therefore as the fifth writing system used today in Japanese.
And to give you some examples, we can find arabiasūji all over Japan. In newspapers, magazines, television news, release dates on movie and concert posters, release dates of video games, prices on products in stores, expiration dates on food products, prices on the menu card in most restaurants, hotels... Arabiasūji are truly everywhere in Japan and are an integral part of Japanese daily life.
Whenever we write a number in Japanese, we will write it in Arabic numbers. Obviously, the Japanese have their own numeral system which is made up of kanji and understand that I do NOT consider the purely Japanese numeral system as a separate writing system since it is made up of kanji. Know already that I will devote a whole part of it to the end of season one. Without going into details, we will see that, sometimes in some cases, we will rather use the Arabic numerals and in other cases, we will rather use the kanji.
Keep the main point for now, that the Arabic numerals have replaced the kanji of numbers in almost all Japanese daily life. Take the scientific community where we often have to do calculations with, sometimes very large numbers (here I will give you some examples with pronunciations in rōmaji, without going into details for the moment).
Take for example the number 47. In Japanese, we will write :
四十七 (yonjū nana)
Okay, there it goes again. It’s not a very high number. But now, if I mean 59 228. In Japanese, we will write :
五万九千二百二十八 (go man kyūsen nihyaku nijū hachi)
Here, we are practically on nine kanji while in Arabic numbers, we only have five characters. You already understand that Arabic numerals are much easier to understand. If we take the example a little further, imagine an addition entirely in kanji. If we mean 59 228 + 34 589. In Japanese we will write :
五万九千二百二十八 + 三万四千五百八十九
(go man kyūsen nihyaku nijū hachi) + (san man yonsen gohyaku hachijū kyū)
Here. You realize that, even for a Japanese, such an operation becomes incredibly difficult to do if it is written entirely in kanji. And above, we just have an addition, imagine if it was a multiplication or if it were hyper complex equations. Even a Japanese scientist specializing in science would no longer be able to do an easy calcul, so as soon as one touches on the sciences, the Japanese use Arabic numbers.
Now that all that has been said, we will be able to integrate Arabic numbers into our Japanese sentences. Remember the examples we used in our previous courses :
青い帽子を買う。
I buy a blue hat.
白いYシャツを買う。
I buy a white shirt.
Now if we want to say « I’m buying three white shirts. », we will write in Japanese :
3枚の白いYシャツを買う。
I buy three white shirts.
You already notice some small novelties. I put you in color the kanji on the one hand, the hiragana on the other hand and finally the katakana in another color :
3枚の白いYシャツを買う。
I buy three white shirts.
The hiragana の and the hiragana を are particles. We have the word « shirts » in katakana Yシャツ. Note the presence of the rōmaji Y. And we have the kanji 枚, 白 and 買. The kanji 枚 is a numeral counter. To count, the Japanese use number counters according to what they want to count. There are number counters for various categories of objects and living things. I do not go into details here but know that when you want to indicate an amount of something, you must use the number counter that relates to it. For a scarf, it will be 枚. We will see the numerical counters much later when we have started grammar. Finally, we have the arabiasūji 3 which tells us the number of shirts. We could have written this in kanji of course, but writing it in Arabic numbers is much more common.
This is how in a single sentence, we can mix several writing systems. You can see that this is quite possible and in the Japanese language it is very common.
Even though the Japanese use the arabiasūji, it is necessary to know the Japanese numeral system. Indeed, if I give you any number, for example the number 47... How will the Japanese pronounce the number « 47 » ? Well, they will pronounce it according to the pronunciation of the kanji. In kanji, « 47 » is written and pronounced 四十七. (yonjū nana). So, you understand that we will have to study the Japanese numerical system based on kanji to be able to read in Japanese the Arabic numbers.
To give you another example, here is the number « 47 » in Roman numerals : XLVII. How are you going to read it ? You will read it « forty-seven ». We read in our own language a foreign writing system. For Japanese, it’s the same. The Japanese will read it « yonjū nana ». They will read in their own language according to their numeral system a foreign writing system.
So, this is why you need to learn the Japanese numeral system but don’t worry, it will be fun. The Japanese numeral system is very easy to learn, it’s pure logic, you’ll see ; very easy to learn even if in writing it is not the most practical system, we could see it. We’ll learn how to count from zero to infinity, we’ll also learn to write the date in Japanese, read the time and lots of other things. But before we get there, we need to take a closer look at the kana and kanji. The program for this first season is still very busy.
This course was the last of this second part. Review everything we’ve seen so far because in the next course we’ll get to the heart of the matter.
Thank you for taking the time to read this course and see you soon.
Arabiasūji introducing