5.2. COUNTERS 253
time and duration is striking:
”What time is it?””How long is it?”This difference is also very important for actual counting statements;
quite often people starting with Japanese will mix up and , creating
sentences such as the following:
”It’s three hours long.”When they really mean to say , ”it’s 3 o’ clock”. Similarly,
they might say:
”(I) studied at 2 o’ clock.”while meaning to say , ”I studied for two hours”./- Days
Moving up from hours to days, we reach a rather interesting counter. As
explained before, this counter is special in several ways. Firstly, counting
1 to 10 days uses the counter in its pronunciation , paired with native
Japanese readings for the numbers. 14 and 24, too, use pronounced
as , but use a mixed Chinese/Japanese reading for the number, and ”20
days” has its own special word. The rest of the days are counted using
in its pronunciation , with Chinese read numbers:
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