Japanese Counter Word

Japanese Counter Word

In Japanese, counter words or counters (josūshi 助数詞) are used along with numbers to count things, actions, and events.

In Japanese, as in Chinese and Korean, numerals cannot quantify nouns by themselves (except, in certain cases, for the numbers from one to ten; see below). For example, to express the idea "two dogs" in Japanese one must say 二匹の犬 ni hiki no inu (literally "two small-animal dog"). Here 犬 inu means "dog", 二 ni is the number 2, and 匹 hiki is the counter for small animals. These counters are not independent words and always appear with a number (or question word) before them. If the number is unknown, a question word is used, most often 何 nan, as in 何名様 nan-mei-sama "how many guests", or sometimes 幾 iku as in 幾晩 iku-ban "how many nights?".

Counters are similar in function to the word "pieces" in "two pieces of paper" and "cup" in "two cups of coffee". They differ, however, in that they cannot take non-numerical modifiers. So where "two pieces of paper" translates fairly directly as "paper two-flat-pieces", the phrase "two white pieces of paper" requires the addition of another noun to accept the modifier: "paper white sheet two-flat-pieces."

Just as in English, different counters can be used to convey different types of quantity. In English, one can say one loaf of bread or one slice of bread. In Japanese, the equivalents would be パン一斤 pan ikkin ("bread one-loaf") and パン一枚 pan ichimai ("bread one-flat-piece").

Grammatically, counter words can appear either before or after the noun they count; they generally occur after the noun (following particles), and if used before the noun, they emphasize the quantity; this is a common mistake in English learners of Japanese. For example, to say " drank two bottles of beer", one can say either ビールを二本飲んだ bīru o nihon nonda, which is more normal, or 二本のビールを飲んだ nihon no bīru o nonda, which conveys " drank two bottles of beer", and would only be appropriate when emphasizing the number, as in response to a question ("How many beers did you drink?").