Learn Japanese
Lesson 72: Introduction to counters
Counters are suffixes that combine with numbers when different things are counted. Unlike in English, where the thing you are counting directly follows the number (e.g. 25 pencils), in Japanese there are dozens of different counter words for this purpose. In this lesson we introduce the counter 人 used for counting numbers of people.
Counter words directly follow the number of the thing you are counting. For example, 200 people is written 200人. Counters tend to contain irregularities in the way they are pronounced for certain numbers. For 人 there are four irregularities. They are for the numbers 1, 2, 4, and 7, as shown in the table below.
Below are some example sentences to show you how counters are used in context.
Question | Answer |
---|---|
two people |
二人 hutari |
people counter |
〜人 nin |
three people |
三人 sannin |
four people |
四人 yonin |
five people |
五人 gonin |
six people |
六人 rokunin |
seven people |
七人 sitinin |
eight people |
八人 hatinin |
nine people |
九人 kyuunin |
we |
私たち watasitati |
There are nine of us. |
私たちは九人です。 watasitati ha kyuunin desu. |
ten people |
十人 zyuunin |
how many people |
何人 nannin |
How many people were there? |
何人がいましたか? nannin ga imasita ka? |
The two of us watched TV together. |
私たちは二人でテレビを見ました。 watasitati ha hutari de terebi wo mimasita. |
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