[Back to the main Japanese page] When learning a foreign
language, you would think that at least the numbers would be
simple (don't we all have ten fingers?). We do all have ten
fingers, but actually, number-related expressions in Japanese
can be confusing. There are several differences between the way
Japanese and Indo-European languages deal with numbers. First of
all, in Japanese there are two words for four, seven, and nine,
but they're not interchangeable; you just have to know which one
to use in each case. For instance, when counting, you say shi
for four, but in phone numbers, you say yon. When referring to
the month of April, which is said literally as "4-month", you
again use shi. [For seven, the two words are shichi and nana,
and for nine they are ku and kyu]. But that's only the beginning
of the number woes. When referring to numbers of particular
objects, there are two systems. One uses a number word, like
those mentioned in the above paragraph, plus a "counter," which
indicates what type of obje