Quote:
Originally Posted by steven
Haha, I'm pretty sure I understood what's going on here, but just to clarify 機（き）is a counter used for airplanes? I can safely say that I have not encountered this once in a conversation. I guess we don't have airplanes flying around here, but still! 台 is something that I hear all the time though.
|
How do you count airplanes around where you live, then? 機 is the
ONLY counter I've ever read or heard airplanes being counted with in my half-century-long life as a Japanese-speaker. I couldn't even think of an alternative counter. When announcements are made on domestic flights, the word used to mean "this aircraft" is always 当機（とうき）.
Quote:
|
Sashimister, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask a question about counters. A few months back someone told me that when writing horizontally, in Japanese you use Arabic numerals (ie 1 2 3 4 5 6...). When writing vertically, Japanese use kanji. The person said that is the "general rule", but I've seen that rule broken quite a few times. Are there certain counters that just look better with kanji-numbers and certain counters that look better with Arabic numerals? Could it be a personal style thing?
|
That
is the general rule and I think I can safely say that I see vertually no exceptions to the rule in the printed media, which is only natural because that's visually the easiest way for us to communicate with one another when using numbers and counters. Needless to say, though, I am not including websites in my discussion for obvious reasons.
What I suspect that you may be mixed up about this rule is the following. When we see a "phrase" consisting of a smaller number and a simpler counter, we sort of consider it to be a word. Examples are 二人、一人前 (one order/portion of food), 三位 (third place), etc. These words are very often written in kanji even when written horizontally.
With larger numbers, it's more obvious which one looks "better" and "easier" in most people's eyes. You simply aren't going to see 「２４,８３０人」 written vertically. You will, however, see 「８人」 written both vertically and horizontally.
Last thing I want to add, which I'm not quite convinced that many Japanese-learners are aware of, is that the general Japanese public are far more used to using Arabic numerals than the kanji numerals. We spend little time using kanji numerals in arithmetic in elementary school or in real life. This means that we have a hard time remembering numbers if we see them in kanji. Just thought to add that because I have a feeling that some of you may have thought the opposite way.