"paper two flat-count"), "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". So while "two pieces of paper" translates fairly directly as 紙二枚 kami ni-mai (lit. However, they cannot take non-numerical modifiers. Some nouns prefer 幾 iku, as in 幾晩？ iku-ban? "how many nights?" and 幾日も行っていた iku-nichi mo itte ita "I was gone for many days."Ĭounters are similar in function to the word "pieces" in "two pieces of paper" or "cups" in "two cups of coffee". "what people-count honored-ones QUESTION"). "some people-count honored-ones"), and "how many guests?" as 何名様？ nan mei-sama? (lit. For example, "some guests" can be translated as 何名様 nan mei-sama (lit. 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".
Here 二 ni is the number "two", 匹 hiki is the counter 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".Ĭounters are not independent words they must appear with a numeric prefix.
For example, to express the idea "two dogs" in Japanese one could say 二匹の犬 ni-hiki no inu (literally "two small-animal-count POSSESSIVE dog"), or 犬二匹 inu ni-hiki (literally "dog two small-animal-count"), but just pasting 二 and 犬 together in either order is ungrammatical. In Japanese, as in Chinese and Korean, numerals cannot quantify nouns by themselves (except, in certain cases, for the numbers from one to ten see below). In Japanese, counter words or counters ( 助数詞, josūshi) are measure words used with numbers to count things, actions, and events.
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