An introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

5.3. USING NUMBERS 271

5.3.3 More advanced mathematics

While there are many topics that we could treat here, this isn’t a book on
mathematics in Japanese. Treating all mathematical topics would take up
too many pages, and would for the most part be rather boring. Instead,
we’ll look at two more ”simple”, but less basic, mathematical constructions
before moving on to ”real” language paĴerns.

Squaring and cubing

There are two special words for squaring (x²) and cubing (x³),
and

, used to indicate square units and cubed units respectively. For in-
stance, when indicating something is 500 square kilometres, one would
say:

500

( )

”(It) is 500 square kilometres.”

Or, if one wanted to say a particular vehicle has a 12 cubic meter
interior, one could say:

12

”The interior fits 12 cubic meters.”

Raising power and taking roots

Going beyond squares or cubes, and raising numbers to an arbitrary power

in Japanese uses the counter
, and is used in the following way:

”7 to the power 3 is 343.”

The inverse of this operation is taking the root of some power, which

is done with the ’counter’
, which is just the counter for raising power
paired with the noun for root:

”49’s square root is seven.”

And that’s it, that’s all the mathematics you will probably care to
know of how to work with, so let’s leave the numbers for what they are