How to count things (1) number (1)

As you know, the Japanese language has one character (漢字: Kanji) and two letters (ひらがな: Hiragana, カタカナ: Katakana). Kanji was from ancient China and Hiragana and Katakana were made from Kanji in Japan.

We use Hiragana letters for Japanese original vocabularies, and Katakana letters for loanwords except for Chinese origins. The Kanji characters are adopted to many independent words (自立語: jiritsu-go) from both of Chinese classic vocabularies and Japanese original ones.

Every Kanji character has two types of pronunciations --the Chinese style (音読み: on'yomi) and the Japanese original style (訓読み: kun'yomi). When we must write to distinguish pronunciations of Kanji beside, we use the Katakana for Chinese style pronunciation and the Hiragana for Japanese style one.

The numbers, too, have two styles of pronunciations. In this column, I use the Hiragana for Japanese style ones and Katakana for Chinese ones. Also, I use the marks "- (hyphen)" for representing long vowels (長母音) instead of official accent marks, "^ (reversed V)" or "￣ （upper bar）". Very strict Alphabet writings of Japanese need to be distinguished long vowels from short ones with these marks; â, î, û, ê, ô or ā, ī, ū, ē, ō. They are all long vowels and we can use one group as we like. However, most of Japanese people usually do not write them. I would not like you to mistake "-" as a hyphen in this weblog.



Standard pronunciations of numbers are below:

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
零	一	二	三	四	五	六	七	八	九	十
レイ	イチ	ニ	サン	シ	ゴ	ロク	シチ	ハチ	キュウ（ク）	ジュウ
rei	ichi	ni	san	shi	go	roku	shichi	hachi	kyu-(ku)	ju-

All of these are Chinese style pronunciations.

However, we sometimes speak and write like this:

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
	一	二	三	四	五	六	七	八	九	十
ゼロ	イチ	ニ	サン	よん	ゴ	ロク	なな	ハチ	キュウ（ク）	ジュウ
zero	ichi	ni	san	yon	go	roku	nana	hachi	kyu-(ku)	ju-

"Zero"(0) is from English. The pronunciation "rei" has a lot of different words in Japanese. So, we often use "zero" instead of "rei" in order not to mistake. You can speak both of "rei" and "zero" as you like for "0" the Arabic writing, but do not adapt "zero" to "零", the Chinese character. It can be say only "rei". By the way, the ancient Japanese language did not have the idea of zero, so we were not able to count it. Thank you India!

"Yon"(4) and "Nana"(7) are from original Japanese.
As for 4, pronunciation "shi" resembles "ni"(2) and means death "死 (shi)". So we prefer to "yon". In the same way, we usualy use "nana" because pronunciation "shichi" resembles "ichi"(1) and "hachi"(8).

I think this mixed pronunciations were come from dialects. In Tokyo, people are very good at pronounce "shi" clearly and strongly so that the distinction of "ichi"(1), "shichi"(7) and "hachi"(8) is comparatively easier. However, people in Kansai and western Japan speak "shi" very softly so that we often say "hichi" for "shichi".(Actually, old people speak "hichi" in western Japan). So, 7 can be pronounced both of "shichi" and "nana".

You can use the couple of "shi"(4) and "shichi"(7), of "shi"(4) and "nana"(7), of "yon"(4) and "shichi"(7), of "yon"(4) and "nana"(7).

The way of counting numbers mentioned above are for the case one by one. However, when we count numbers continuously, we actually speak them like this:

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
	一	二	三	四	五	六	七	八	九	十
ゼロ	イチ	ニー	サン	よん	ゴー	ロク	なな	ハチ	キュウ（クー）	ジュウ
zero	ichi	ni-	san	yon	go-	roku	nana	hachi	kyu-(ku-)	ju-

All pronunciations are two moras.
We want to make the same length because a single mora is sometimes difficult to listen.


By the way, Japanese original counting is probably like this:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
ひい	ふう	みい	よう	いつ	む(う　)	なな	や(あ)	ここの	とお
hi-	fu-	mi-	yo-	itsu	mu(-)	nana	ya(-)	kokono	to-

However, I am sorry that the right pronunciations of 8 and 9 above are uncertain. I do not know them because this style counting is not popular now.



Thank you for reading.
Sorry for my poor English!



How to count things (2) number (2)