5.2. COUNTERS 251
5.2.5 Counting time related units
- Seconds
Counting seconds in Japanese uses , for which the pronunciations are:
( )
An example sentence would be:
”How long will it take? 20 seconds, half a minute?”
- Minutes
Moving from seconds to minutes, the counter for minutes has different
pronunciations for 3, 4, and the question word:
An example sentence would be:
”It’s now 5 minutes to 3.”
Also, the measure ”half minute” (as used in the example sentence
for seconds) is
, using the same pronunciation as for and.