5.2. COUNTERS 257
months, and is typically only used for indicating 1 to 3 months of dura-
tion. This is a slightly poetic counter, but is also used in formal writing to
indicate the 1-3 month durational range:
- Months of duration
While – like and – on its own means ”month of the year”, the
suffix cannot be used to turn into a durational counter. Instead, the
prefix is used, but be careful: this is not the katakana , but actually a
simplified kanji form of. You can tell this difference by looking at the
size of the kanji: ( ) vs. – the katakana is much bigger
than the simplified version of. Why exactly this kanji got simplified to
this deceptive form is not entirely clear, but it has, which means you’ll need
to be able to recognise it as a counter. The standard contractions occur in
the pronunciations:
An example sentence would be:”I will be abroad for three months.”- Years
Once more, there is the distinction between years in an era, , and years
of duration,. The pronunciations for are: