InJapanese,counter words orcounters aremeasure words used withnumbers to count things, actions, and events. Counters are added directly after numbers.^[1] There are numerous counters, and different counters are used depending on the kind or shape of nouns that are being described.^[1] The Japanese term,josūshi (助数詞;lit. 'helping number word'), appears to have been literallycalqued from the English termauxiliarynumeral used byBasil Hall Chamberlain inA Handbook of Colloquial Japanese.^[2][3]

In Japanese, as inChinese andKorean, numerals cannot quantifynouns by themselves (except, in certain cases, for the numbers from one to ten; see below).^[4] For example, to express the idea "two dogs" in Japanese one could say either:

but just pasting二 and犬 together in either order is ungrammatical. Here二ni is the number "two",匹hiki is thecounter for small animals,のno is the possessive particle (a reversed "of", similar to the " 's" in "John's dog"), and犬inu is the word "dog".

Counters are not independent words; they must appear with a numeric prefix. The number can be imprecise:何nan or, less commonly,幾iku, can both be used to mean "some/several/many", and, in questions, "what/how many/how much". For example:

Some nouns prefer幾iku, as in:

幾晩？iku-ban? "how many nights?"

幾日も行っていたiku-nichi mo itte ita "I was gone for many days."

Counters are similar in function to the word "pieces" in "two pieces of paper" or "cups" in "two cups of coffee". However, they cannot take non-numerical modifiers. So while "two pieces of paper" translates fairly directly as:

"two green pieces of paper" must be rendered as緑の紙二枚midori no kami ni-mai, akin to "two pieces of green paper".

Just as in English, different counters can be used to convey different types of quantity.

There are numerous counters, and depending on the kind or shape of nouns the number is describing, different counters are used.[1]

Grammatically, counter words can appear either before or after the noun they count. They generally occurafter the noun (followingparticles), and if used before the noun, they emphasize the quantity; this is a common mistake for English learners of Japanese. For example:

In contrast:

would only be appropriate when emphasizing the number as in responding with "[I] dranktwo bottles of beer" to "How many beers did you drink?".

Ingenerative grammar, one proposed structure of Japanese nominal phrases includes three layers of functional projections: #P, CaseP, and QuantifierP.^[5] Here, #P is placed above NP to explain Japanese's lack of plural morphology, and to make clear the # head is the stem of such morphology.^[5] This structure relies onmovement in order to satisfy agreement viaextended projection principle features.^{[clarification needed][5]}

In Japanese, virtually all nouns must use a counter to express number because Japanese lacks singular/plural morphology.^[6][5] In this sense, virtually all Japanese nouns aremass nouns. This grammatical feature can result in situations where one is unable to express the number of a particular object in a syntactically correct way because one does not know, or cannot remember, the appropriate counting word. With quantities from one to ten, this problem can often be sidestepped by using the traditional numerals (see below), which can quantify many nouns without help. For example, "four apples" isりんご四個ringo yonko where個ko is the counter, but can also be expressed, using the traditional numeral four, asりんご四つringo yottsu. These traditional numerals cannot be used to count all nouns, however; some, including nouns for people and animals, require a proper counter (except for 1 and 2 people, which virtually always use variants of the traditional numerals; seeexceptions).

Some of the more common counters may substitute for less common ones. For example,匹hiki (see below) is often used for all animals, regardless of size. However, many speakers will prefer to use the traditionally correct counter,頭tō, when speaking of larger animals such as horses. This yields a range of possible counters, with differing degrees of usage and acceptability – for example, when orderingkushikatsu (fried skewers), one may order them as二串futa-kushi (two skewers),二本ni-hon (two sticks), or二つfuta-tsu (two items), in decreasing order of precision.

Counters may be intentionally misused for humorous, stupid, or insulting effects. For example, the phrase男一匹otoko ippiki ("one man [like an animal]"), uses匹hiki, the counter for animals, instead of the typical counters for people.^[7]

This is a selective list of some of the more commonly used counting words.

This list also includes some counters and usages that are rarely used or not widely known; other words can also be used as counters more sporadically.

Systematic changes occur when particular numbers precede counters that begin with certain phonemes. For example,一ichi +回kai →一回ikkai. The details are listed in the table below.

This can be the result of the morpho-phonological phenomenon of historical sound changes,^[9] as shown by the voicing of匹hiki:

change from glottal[h] to bilabial[p].

It may also be that some counters carry features which are responsible forsuch euphonic changes^[clarification needed] for singular, dual, and plural nouns, where singular carries [+singular, −augmented] features, dual carries [−singular, −augmented] features, and plural carries [−singular, +augmented] features.^[10]

These changes are followed fairly consistently but exceptions and variations between speakers do exist. Where variations are common, more than one alternative is listed.

Jū is replaced by eitherju- orji- (じゅっ/じっ) followed by a doubled consonant before the voiceless consonants as shown in the table.Ji- is the older form, but it has been replaced byju- in the speech of recent generations.

The traditional numbers are used by and for young children to give their ages, instead of using the age counter歳 (or才)sai.

Some counters, notably日nichi and人nin, use the traditional numerals for some numbers as shown in the table below. Other uses of traditional numbers are usually restricted to certain phrases, such as一月hitotsuki and二月futatsuki (one and two months respectively),一言hitokoto (a single word) and一度hitotabi (once).

Sometimes common numbers that have a derived meaning are written using different kanji. For example,hitori (alone) is written独り, andfutatabi (once more, another time) is normally written再び instead of二度. The counter for monthskagetsu (derived from kanji箇月) is commonly writtenヶ月.

Nana andshichi are alternatives for 7,yon andshi are alternatives for 4, andkyū andku are alternatives for 9. In those three pairs of options,nana,yon andkyū respectively are more commonly used. Some counters, however, notably人nin (people),月gatsu (month of the year),日ka/nichi (day of the month, days),時ji (time of day) and時間jikan (hours) take certain alternatives only. These are shown in the table below.

While回kai (occurrences) and銭sen (0.01 yen, now rarely used) follow the euphonic changes listed above, homophones階kai (stories/floors of a building) and千sen (1000) are slightly different as shown below, although these differences are not followed by all speakers. Thus三階 ("third floor") can be read eithersankai orsangai, while三回 ("three times") can only be readsankai.

In general, the counter words mentioned above arecardinal numbers, in that they indicate quantity. To transform a counter word into anordinal number that denotes position in a sequence,目me is added to the end of the counter. Thus "one time" would be translated as一回ikkai, whereas "the first time" would be translated as一回目ikkaime.

This rule is inconsistent, however, as counters without theme suffix are often used interchangeably with cardinal and ordinal meanings. For example,三階sangai can mean both "three floors" and "third floor."

To express a period of time one may add間kan to the following words:秒byō,分fun,時ji,日nichi (and its irregular readings aside fromtsuitachi),週shū,ヶ月kagetsu and年nen. Usage varies depending on the word, though. For example, omittingkan in the case of時間jikan would be a mistake, whereasshūkan andshū are both in frequent use. In addition,kagetsukan is rarely heard due to essentially being superfluous, theka already functioning to express the length.

The counter for rabbits is-wa (羽), which is the same as the counter for birds. Usually,-hiki  (匹) is used for "small-to-medium-size animals",^[12] therefore, the counter for rabbits is an exception. There are many theories about why-wa (羽) is used for rabbits instead of -hiki (匹).

One of the theories is that in Edo-era, eating four-legged animals was strictly forbidden by the government, and people were not allowed to consume rabbit meat.^[13][14] Then, people started to categorize rabbits as birds so that they could consume rabbit meat, and the counter was also changed from-hiki (匹) to-wa (羽).^[13][14] Another theory is that taste of rabbit meat is similar to bird meat, and in addition, the rabbits were captured using a net just like birds so-wa (羽) is used instead of -hiki (匹).^[15] Takemitsu says that the origin of the word rabbit,兎usagi, is羽u which describes birds feather: therefore, the counter,-wa (羽), is used for rabbits.^[16]

• Measure words
• Japanese units of measurement

• About.com - CountersArchived 2010-12-03 at theWayback Machine
• A list of numeral counters with ichi/hito set indicated.

• Japanese grammar
• Japanese vocabulary
• Science and technology in Japan
• Parts of speech

• Articles containing Japanese-language text
• CS1 uses Japanese-language script (ja)
• CS1 Japanese-language sources (ja)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Wikipedia articles needing clarification from December 2022
• Wikipedia articles needing clarification from September 2010
• Pages with plain IPA
• Wikipedia articles needing clarification from April 2023
• Webarchive template wayback links