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🇯🇵 Precision in the Japanese language

If you have traveled to Japan, you may have noticed the  attention to details in this country: everything is done meticulously,  with care. I would say precision is in our genes. When I was working in Japan as a sales and PR manager for the Italian shoe brand Giuseppe  Zanotti, the Italian team was always stunned by the Japanese market’s  attention to detail. If there was the smallest difference between the  press sample and the actual in-store shoe — for example the color of a  lining inside the shoe — the magazine would require us to mention it, whereas in many other countries it was not an issue.

So it is not surprising that the language is also extremely precise, and if you are learning Japanese, you know this all too very well. Today,  I’d like to talk about the counters that illustrates it perfectly.

In Japanese, we have hundreds of different counter words that are used  very specifically. They are words that we put after numbers when we count something, and they vary according to the type of objects, usually  based on their shapes. For example, in English and French we say:

I bought two books = J’ai acheté deux livres

We  have no classifier, we just mention the number and the actual object.  We can even sometimes omit the object’s noun: “How many books did you  buy? – I bought two“.

In Japanese, we need to add a word after the number, which is the counter. It’s like if we were saying “I bought two-satsu books” (satsu is the counter for books).

Let’s  go over few of the most common counters: (Please note that the forms of some counters sometimes vary according to the number. They are listed  in the Genki 1 book, on pages 380-381.)

– satsu (冊) = used for books, magazines.

– mai (枚) = used for flat thin objects such as sheets, t-shirts, money bills.

– hon (本) = used for long cylindrical objects such as pens, bottles.

– soku (足) = used for shoes, socks.

hai (杯) = used for cups.

– tsuu (通) = used for letters.

– dai (台) = used for big objects, such as cars, pianos.

…and the list goes on!

Of  course there are more: for animals, humans, and monsters, the counters have even  subdivisions — by sizes and types of animals, state of the humans, whether they are alive or dead, or the kindness of monsters! It’s pretty fascinating, so I will address some of them in a next  post.

PS: for students who are overwhelmed by the counters, you can avoid them by using the general way of counting “hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu” which includes a counter, so you don’t need to add anything. They are normally used for all types of small objects, so they are useful in stores or restaurants when you don’t remember the appropriate counter while ordering. 

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