I already mentioned this to you in the first Japanese course, I told you that the kanji of Japanese numbers have a purely Japanese reading. So far, we have seen the Sino-Japanese readings of these kanji, today it is time to move on to purely Japanese reading.
For the little historical anecdote, know that before the arrival of the kanji, the Japanese had an extremely simple numeral system where they were content to count small amounts of everything and anything. After the kanji arrived – you know the chorus by now –, they affixed the purely Japanese pronunciations they had already created. Although in the end, it is the Sino-Japanese pronunciations that are still used today to count from 0 to infinity as we have seen in the first three courses.
We will see a little below why and how purely Japanese pronunciations are used but before that and to better understand the rest, try to memorize the list I have prepared for you below.
Again, there will be nothing complicated in this course which is very light indeed, there is no puzzle, it is learning by heart, pure and hard, so let’s start without delay.
one .
一 .
ひと .
イチ
two .
二 .
ふた .
ニ
three .
三 .
み .
サン
four .
四 .
み / よん .
シ
five .
五 .
いつ .
ゴ
six .
六 .
む .
ロク
seven .
七 .
なな .
シチ
huit .
八 .
や .
ハチ
nine .
九 .
ここの .
ク/ キュウ
ten .
十 .
とお .
ジュウ
one hundred .
百 .
もも .
ヒャク
one thousand .
千 .
ち .
セン
ten thousand .
万 .
よろず .
マン
Little thing to know for the number four, its purely Japanese pronunciation can be よ / よん. The pronunciation of purely Japanese readings will sometimes vary.
For your general knowledge, know that there is a unique kanji for the number twenty with a purely Japanese pronunciation. I do not put the kanji for you but only the pronunciation which will serve us much later. Same thing for the numbers thirty and forty, but the Sino-Japanese pronunciations of those will never serve us. It is strictly for your general knowledge.
20 → はた
(30 → みそ)
(40 → よそ)
We can now return to the list of our purely Japanese numbers. The question that we can ask ourselves now is : why the Japanese have kept the purely Japanese pronunciations of the kanji of numbers because we know that they do not use them to count. On the other hand, the Japanese use them to enumerate people or things using numeral counters.
To help you understand better, the way we Westerners list things is very different and much simpler, above all, than the Japanese system. In all Western languages, if we mean : « There are four people in the living room. », we say « There are four people in the living room. », it is very simple. We have the number and the name of the item we are listing. So, it’s extremely simple.
The Japanese, when they want to enumerate elements, they use numeral counters in the form of suffixes which they add to the Sino-Japanese pronunciation of the numbers.
Okay, I’ll give you a little overview with the suffix つ which is used to list things (generally).
一つ .
ひとつ . one
二つ .
ふたつ . two
三つ .
みっつ . three
四つ .
よっつ . four
五つ .
いつつ . five
六つ .
むっつ . six
七つ .
ななつ . seven
八つ .
やっつ . eight
九つ .
ここのつ . nine
Note that the pronunciation, depending on the numeral counter used, may vary by taking a pause.
We will not see the suffixes for all existing numeral counters today because it is a very broad subject... and above all quite complex. I don’t want to bother you with that now so we’ll come back to that much later when we get into grammar.
For now, memorize the Sino-Japanese pronunciations of the numbers, remember all that has been said about the numeral counters. Not everything has been said about this yet, but keep it in the back of your mind, we’ll come back to it when the time comes.
This course is now over, it was very short but it was important to bring up the subject. I can now leave you to your exercises. In the first, I give you Arabic numbers and you write them in kanji, in purely Japanese reading and in Sino-Japanese reading. In the second, I give you purely Japanese readings and you write them in Arabic numbers. Nothing complicated.
Thank you for reading this course. Continue to be diligent in your work and you will make progress, I guarantee it.
I wish you to revise your course well and see you next time.
Introduction