Japanese Lesson of the Week: Week #3.

This week we will be reviewing numbers. Ready? Here we go!

Cardinal Numbers

• One - ichi
• Two - ni
• Three - san
• Four - shi (or yon)
• Five - go
• Six - roku
• Seven - shichi (or nana)
• Eight - hachi
• Nine - ku (or kyū)
• Ten - jū

As you can see, a couple of the numbers have multiple pronounciations in the Japanese language. According to our Lonely Planet handbook, the pronunciations can be used interchangeably. 

Ordinal Numbers

To use an ordinal number, one just adds ban to the end of the corresponding cardinal number.

• First - ichiban
• Second -niban
• Third - samban
• Fourth - yomban
• Fifth - goban

Our handbook does not say why the "n" in san and yon (in numbers three and four) have been changed to "m" in the ordinal numbers.

The section about numbers also goes over counters, or classifiers, but I figure this little lesson will be sufficient for all of us for the time being. The counters used in speech depend on what you are counting, so there are a couple different words we'd have to learn to correctly distinguish between objects, people, or animals that we were counting.

Happy first week of the new year!