Japanese Numbers · Day 1 of 20
You finished this day
One to ten, twice
Why Japanese has two sets of small numbers
Japanese has two ways of counting to ten and you need both from the first day. One set is for reading numbers off a page, the other is for counting objects when you do not know the right counter. Learning them as one thing is the mistake; learning them as two jobs takes about ten minutes.
The reading set
This is what you say for a number itself: a price, a phone number, a bus route:
Four, seven and nine each have two readings, and that is not a stylistic choice you get to make. よん and なな are the safe defaults when you are saying a number out loud; し and しち are used inside fixed expressions like 四月 and 七時. Getting this wrong is the single most common beginner mistake with numbers, and it is worth over-learning on day one: **default to よん, なな, きゅう** and let the exceptions be taught to you one at a time.
The counting set
This is for counting things when you do not know the counter, up to ten only:
This set stops at ten and has no eleven. That is not an oversight, it is the whole design: it exists as the escape hatch for when you do not know the proper counter for something, and beyond ten you are expected to know it. In a shop, ふたつ ください will get you two of almost anything without you having to work out whether a bread roll takes 個 or 本.
Using them today
Four sentences that cover most of day one:
Notice that the counting set takes no particle and no counter: ひとつ ください is complete. That is what makes it useful before you have learned anything else. The reading set behaves differently and needs a counter attached to it, which is what the rest of this course is about.
Carry over, from earlier days
Check yourself
8 questions. Nothing is saved unless you finish.