Chapter 5

Counters and counting

As mentioned in the outline of Japanese, counting in Japanese is every-
thing but apparent or easy if you’re used to western counting. To count
in Japanese, two things are required: a number, as well as a categorical
marker that indicates what is actually being counted. This makes count-
ing in Japanese not just a maĴer of knowing which words stand for which
numbers, but also which counters stand for which countable categories. As
also mentioned in the outline, the categorical marker for items is usually
not the item noun itself, but a different word acting as categorical counter
particle. For instance, boĴles, pencils and legs are all counted using the
categorical counter for ”long round object”, and birds and rabbits are both
counted using the categorical counter for ”things with wings”. In contrast
to this, clock hours are counted using the specific counter for hours, and the
number of times something happens is counted using the specific counter
for occurrences.
The challenge is then to learn three things in order to successfully
count in Japanese:

which numbers exist and how to construct numbers yourself,

which specific and categorical counters exist, and

which to use when you don’t actually know which you should use.

Just like for regular particles, there exist dictionaries that contain lists and
lists of which word can be used as counter for which category of items,
and if you wish to become a counting machine, it is recommended that you
buy one and go over the lists in it as you will not find a truly exhaustive
list here. Instead, the following list will only contain those counters that
are considered reasonably essential to know in order to do basic counting
with (and that’s already quite a few).

227