Talk:Japanese counter word

Counters, not Measures

Untitled

I think there's some basic confusion with the content and naming of this page. The Japanese words applied to counts, not measures. A count is a (usually integral) number representing how many individual units of something there is. A measure is the application of a numerical value to a quantity.

A number of entries on the chart are actually measures, and many of them are of foreign origin, which should immediately indicate that they are measures. It should at the very least be obvious why Baht and Dollar don't belong on the list. - - Paul Richter 09:28, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I started the page after reading the Chinese measure word article. I agree there's overlap, but I don't think it's that important. I wouldn't object to a redirect or name change though. Not that many of them are of foreign origin. Exploding Boy 11:51, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

I've made the move. Next I'd like to rewrite the whole article... - - Paul Richter 03:17, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that the counters for hundred, thousand, ten thousand and million should have been removed. Exploding Boy 07:32, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)

Those aren't counters, they're numbers, and they are properly described in Japanese numerals. Counters are associated with classes of objects. 'hon' applies to cylindrical objects, 'hiki' applies to small animals -- so what does 'man' apply to? - - Paul Richter 07:59, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Along the same lines I've also removed cho (trillions). Next step: flagging the obscure counters (I've never heard fish counted with "bi"...!). Jpatokal 06:58, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I guess you've never gone shopping in a Japanese supermarket. I saw 尾 bi all the time for fish, in the form 一尾２００円 "one fish 200 yen." But it is uncommon in speech. Squidley 21:04, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I was actually looking for Japanese measures but ended up here. Is there a page with Japanese measures or is that something that I might be getting around to starting one of these days? Jimp 21Sep05

Usage question

I've never understood the usage of small ヶ in Japanese... since that's used several times on this page, is there a page that explains this? If not, should there be? Bigpeteb 16:16, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

At best that'd be a footnote on some page about Japanese writing; it certainly doesn't deserve a page of its own. Squidley 21:04, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's pronounced "ka" (even though it's a small ke), and it's only used in a few counters. That's pretty much it. — Gwalla | Talk 16:56, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Kanji? At least, I think that article should have a good coverage of the usage of this character. -- Taku 23:12, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Except it's not a kanji, as I understand it. It's a small kana. — Gwalla | Talk 00:55, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Of course, it's a katakana, (what was I thinking), except that it sounds ke instead of ka, as you pointed out. But again it's weird to use a katakana. If it is hiragana, then it makes some sense, though. I suggest Japanese writing. I cannot think of other possible places. -- Taku 02:43, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Guys, it's an abbreviation of the kanji 箇. Eldh

Exactly. This is what the page says already. It should be easy to confirm this in a dictionary. This is something debated sometimes in the sci.lang.japan newsgroup, so the Google archives of that would be helpful. --DannyWilde 13:05, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

One mistake

There is one mistake on the bottom of this article.

As for "3kai" and "3gai"

When we say "3 times," we cannot use "3 gai."

However, "3rd floor" is said "3 kai" or "3 gai" depending on person.
The preceding comment was added by 134.114.183.163 while blanking the rest of the talk page. I've restored the remainder of the talk page, as well as "signed" it. Mo0[talk] 02:31, 29 November 2005 (UTC))
She says she did it accidentally and she is sorry. :-) --134.114.183.163 05:43, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Ban/Bridge ?

Two things -

• [1] I believe ban (番) means a lot more than indicated at present, it is often used as an ordinal number if I'm using that word correctly. Even non-Japanese speakers have probably heard of ichiban meaning "number one."
• [2] What's the counter for bridges? I tried to ask someone how many bridges were in Osaka and I couldn't figure it out. --Do Not Talk About Feitclub (contributions) 14:25, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

For bridges, simply "hon" (as in counting something with length) works well enough. When talking about bridges in architecture terms, "ka" (as in "Frames") are used as they are considered a frame of sort. "Kyaku" (as in legs) are sometimes used, but not often enough. "Ko" (as in the general counter word) can be used as well but it's often awkward. Traditional "tsu" can be used like "Turn right at mittsume no hashi" (Turn right at third bridge). --Revth 08:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Classes and pages

Is it worthwhile to mention that the counters for classes and pages are imports from English? Not everyone who reads this page will be able to see that they're actually English words. It's interesting that there is a kanji (頁) whose official reading is English... -- Myria 09:04, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

To Jag149: it is your browser

It is just your browser that is rendering those characters improperly. It shows up fine in my browser (Windows / Firefox). I changed it back.Kcumming 22:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Missing Transliteration

For example, one might say 男一匹なのに ("I am only one man..."). There is no transliteration provided for this sentence. DrGaellon 12:31, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Ten phonetically

I believe ten phonetically is too not tou. (Japanese script does not seem to be available to me in Firefox).

Jonafan 05:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Good catch. Fixed. --Kcumming 14:35, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

号車 gousha

I'm pretty sure 号車 shouldn't be included here. It's just a number followed by the suffix 号 forming the name of the carriage (車) rather than a counter. In the same way ５０２号室 is the name of an apartment in a building and of course the counter is 戸, not 号室. You also can't say 一号車目 etc, and if your referring to length it's always 八両編成 rather than 八号車. Anyone mind if I remove it?

Chunkyasparagus 2007-06-14 T 14:03 UTC

I don't mind at all. Go ahead. You are right about 号車. As for 号室, it is also used when you check in a hotel.--Oda Mari 19:43, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

shurui or shu 種類 or 種 Various types of things

Okay, I know these things are confusing to gaijin, but "Various types of things"? Surely someone can do a better job explaining it than that. TheStripèdOne 20:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I looked this one up in WWWJDIC and it seems to be used for "Kinds", as in "There were 3 kinds of tools on the table." It's also defined as used for species, so I changed the wiki to reflect this definition. Link is http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1Q%BC%EF_1_%A4%B7%A4%E5 TheStripèdOne 14:34, 13 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.252.80.242 (talk)

Syntactic behaviour

There is no information about the syntactic behaviour of Japanese classifiers at all. G Purevdorj 17:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

"The counters... always appear with a number before them." That's all the syntax I'm aware of. If you're talking about how to use numbers in sentences, that's probably beyond the scope of this article. Raichu2 (talk) 23:37, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

A systematic description (or also an enumeration) of the relation of the numeral-classifier compound to the to the modified noun phrase would certainly merit inclusion into this article. Eg "Ano nimai no irogami wo totta" vs. "irogami wo nimai" vs. "irogami nimai wo" vs. "?nimai irogami" vs. "irogami no nimai". G Purevdorj (talk) 08:36, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

User Purevdorj`s proposition seems reasonable. Someone unfamiliar with Japanese may get a wrong impression that examples given are universal. Also there`s distinction between sentences like "gonin no gakusei ga ..." and "gakusei ga gonin...". it`s not all obvious and, I believe, will be of considerable interest to those learning japanese.Томми Нёрд (talk) 12:17, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Separate rarely used counters?

"This list also includes some counters and usages that are rarely used or not widely known."

In that case, should we separate them into two lists, or at least colour code the ones that are rare? It is useful to have them here for reference, but someone using this page to learn Japanese will not know that they should not use them. (Unfortunately I don't know which ones are the rare ones so I don't think I should do it myself.)

Raichu2 (talk) 23:54, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with this - there is a similar comment at the foot of the page. I made a shorter sub-list by category for quick reference; I just tried to pick out some of the most helpful, and highlighted ko. (My thinking is that this page is most likely to be read by English speakers learning Japanese.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.194.100.111 (talk) 12:29, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Changed obsolete Kanji

changed 箇月 to ヶ月. The use of 箇 for that was discontinued long ago, the same as changing 國 to　国 and 澤 to 沢. You can still see some of the above in the names of people (eg; 亀澤) or companies (eg; 紀伊國屋 bookstore), but they are no longer used in words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.147.183.135 (talk) 03:35, 13 February 2009 (UTC) =preceeding comment was me, and I was wrong on 箇, at least for 箇所

Missing counter

This page seems to be missing the counter 号 for numbers of things like rooms, etc. Should we add it? Jwkpiano1 (talk) 08:05, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Couple of suggestions

• "This list also includes some counters and usages that are rarely used or not widely known". It would be interesting to know more specifically what "some" means. Would it be possible to explicitly indicate which are in common usage (I know that "common usage" is somewhat subjective, but a rough idea would be better than nothing).

• The fact that ko is a "general measure word, used when there is no specific counter" merits a mention in the lead section I think. Well, it is mentioned, but only as a counter for apples, so it's not clear that it's used generally.

• It would be interesting to see some discussion of what proportion of nouns can be shoehorned into one of the specific-counter categories, and which default to "ko". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.165.21.146 (talk) 20:20, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Always preceded by numbers?

The intro says "The counters are not independent words and always appear with a number before them." But what about a question such as "how many dogs?" inu nanbiki. I don't think one would call nan a number (NaN!). Dark Formal (talk) 02:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Do not ever believe wikipedia.It is all a lie.Do not ever because it has bad information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.217.128 (talk) 01:17, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Japanese talk is so last year.Listen to Chinese or Korean,but not Japanese because you don't want to be out of fashion do you?I wouldn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.217.128 (talk) 01:21, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

What about 第 requiring the number AFTER it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.100.252.123 (talk) 07:07, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Generations?

Not sure if we could include the generations kanji (世) used in the kings names as Louis XV: ルイ15世. Maybe is not exactly a counter, but a reference for the position in lineage.Chimalli (talk) 14:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Folk etymology?

"Japanese Buddhist monks were not allowed to eat any meat other than birds, but liked rabbit meat so much they came up with the contrived "explanation" that rabbits are actually birds, and that their ears are unusable wings. The rationale was that while moving, rabbits only touched the ground with two feet at a time. Nowadays, wa is the usual counter for rabbits."

I removed this rather amusing explanation for why 羽 "wa"- the counter for birds is also used for rabbits. Checking on the web it is widely repeated, but I cannot find a reliable source to establish it as fact. I also see some competing explanations, but I don't see anything reliable enough to support any over the other at this time. If anyone knows of proper sourcing I have no problem with further changes. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 18:08, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

How about these? [1], [2], [3], and [4]. Oda Mari (talk) 19:44, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I am sure this is apocryphal.

There is a joke that one counts bottles of whiskey in Japanese by the suffix "-tory", as in "ittory", "nittory", "Suntory", but I am sure that is apocryphal, and only an untranslatable Japanese pun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.247.32.168 (talk) 22:19, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

rt and ruby tags

RM Dechaine recently edited this article inserting 5 <rt> tags without closing </rt>. According to HTML <rt> Tag, <rt>...</rt> is supposed to be nested in <ruby>...</ruby>. In any case, unclosed <rt> tags are not correct. I am reverting this edit, and I encourage RM Dechaine to try again. —Anomalocaris (talk) 04:45, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Contradiction in the opening paragraph.

The opening has some pretty blatantly contradictory information: the lead has some information about word order (using dogs and the counter for small animals as an example) and says that counters proceeding what they're modifying is more common. But at the final paragraph of the opening states the exact opposite, i.e. it's more common for counters to follow what they're modifying, and proceeding them is more to emphasize the number.

I'm not sure which is correct, but as things stand now, there's a blatant contradiction that no one seemed to notice.FamAD123 (talk) 01:43, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Handbook of Japanese Grammar

The very first ref ":3" repeated later as ":03" in the section about rabbits, is blatantly wrong conflating the grammar book with a review of it published in a journal. I don't have the book or access to the journal so I can only guess that probably it was the book what was meant. Please fix it. – MwGamera (talk) 16:59, 10 April 2023 (UTC)