JapanForum.com

JapanForum.com (https://www.japanforum.com/forum/)
-   Japanese Language Help (https://www.japanforum.com/forum/japanese-language-help/)
-   -   Help with bigger numbers....and this phrase: (https://www.japanforum.com/forum/japanese-language-help/28785-help-bigger-numbers-phrase.html)

Desstile 11-16-2009 08:12 PM

Help with bigger numbers....and this phrase:
 
I'm having a really hard time with some of the bigger numbers in Japanese. o.O I mean, I have no problem saying a number in the hundreds but when it's a number like: 150,000....I'm not sure how to pronounce it. :S I was hoping you guys could list some examples and how to pronounce them so I can learn from that.

Also, how do you say: "In the morning I eat _______." Or "I eat ____ in the morning" ....either way is fine.

I know 'Asa' is 'morning', and "____ o tabemasu" is "I eat ____." But how do you add them together?

Thanks :)

Nagoyankee 11-17-2009 12:29 AM

I'd be more than willing to help if I didn't have to use romaji... Can you not read hiragana?

Columbine 11-17-2009 12:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Desstile (Post 783112)
I'm having a really hard time with some of the bigger numbers in Japanese. o.O I mean, I have no problem saying a number in the hundreds but when it's a number like: 150,000....I'm not sure how to pronounce it. :S I was hoping you guys could list some examples and how to pronounce them so I can learn from that.

Also, how do you say: "In the morning I eat _______." Or "I eat ____ in the morning" ....either way is fine.

I know 'Asa' is 'morning', and "____ o tabemasu" is "I eat ____." But how do you add them together?

Thanks :)

I'm assuming you're a real beginner from your question, but try and pick up hiragana ASAP and stop using romaji. You'll learn the langage faster and more accurately. Stuff like counting also makes much more sense in kanji.

Counting in Japanese is pretty logical. Think about the basics.
To get 'tens' of numbers, ie, 20, 30, 40, we take the number of tens, and then add the tens. So ni-jyuu, san-jyuu, yon-kyuu, go-jyuu, which literally is 'two-tens, three-tens, four-tens, five-tens etc"

At 100, instead of saying 'ten-tens' or 'jyuu-jyuu' we switch to using 'hyaku' and the process starts again. At 1000, we change 'jyuu-hyaku' to 'sen'.
at 10,000, we change 'jyuu-sen' to 'man'. The trick when you get to 'jyuu-man' you don't change it.

So with numbers over 100,000, it's mostly just a case of adding up 10,000's, until you get to 100 million, then the word 'oku' is used.

EG:
5= go = five
15=jyuu-go= ten and five
50= go-jyuu= five tens
500= go-hyaku =five one-hundreds
550=go-hyaku-go-jyuu= five one-hundreds and five tens.
5000= go-sen= five one-thousands.
5555= go-sen-go-hyakyu-go-jyuu-go= five one-thousands and five one-hundreds and five tens and five.
50,000= go-man= five ten-thousands.
100,000= jyuu-man = ten ten-thousands.
150,000= jyuu-go-man= 15 ten-thousands.
1,000,000= hyaku-man = 100 ten-thousands (aka, one million)
10,000,000= Sen-man = 1000 ten-thousans (aka, ten million)

As for "In the morning I eat _______." Or "I eat ____ in the morning", the simplest structure is: ( "Time" ni "Food" o "Tabemasu"). So "asa ni _____ o tabemasu." Ni is, on a very very basic level, a time/location marker. It's the 'In the' part of "in the morning' or the 'at' of "at noon". Obviously, that's not the whole story; ni has many more uses but that's all you need to know to make this sentence work.

But seriously seriously, learn your hiragana and katakana before you start going much further with your learning. Romaji will only handicap your understanding of Japanese.

KyleGoetz 11-17-2009 01:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Columbine (Post 783171)
I'm assuming you're a real beginner from your question, but try and pick up hiragana ASAP and stop using romaji. You'll learn the langage faster and more accurately. Stuff like counting also makes much more sense in kanji.

Counting in Japanese is pretty logical. Think about the basics.
To get 'tens' of numbers, ie, 20, 30, 40, we take the number of tens, and then add the tens. So ni-jyuu, san-jyuu, yon-kyuu, go-jyuu, which literally is 'two-tens, three-tens, four-tens, five-tens etc"

At 100, instead of saying 'ten-tens' or 'jyuu-jyuu' we switch to using 'hyaku' and the process starts again. At 1000, we change 'jyuu-hyaku' to 'sen'.
at 10,000, we change 'jyuu-sen' to 'man'. The trick when you get to 'jyuu-man' you don't change it.

So with numbers over 100,000, it's mostly just a case of adding up 10,000's, until you get to 100 million, then the word 'oku' is used.

EG:
5= go = five
15=jyuu-go= ten and five
50= go-jyuu= five tens
500= go-hyaku =five one-hundreds
550=go-hyaku-go-jyuu= five one-hundreds and five tens.
5000= go-sen= five one-thousands.
5555= go-sen-go-hyakyu-go-jyuu-go= five one-thousands and five one-hundreds and five tens and five.
50,000= go-man= five ten-thousands.
100,000= jyuu-man = ten ten-thousands.
150,000= jyuu-go-man= 15 ten-thousands.
1,000,000= hyaku-man = 100 ten-thousands (aka, one million)
10,000,000= Sen-man = 1000 ten-thousans (aka, ten million)

As for "In the morning I eat _______." Or "I eat ____ in the morning", the simplest structure is: ( "Time" ni "Food" o "Tabemasu"). So "asa ni _____ o tabemasu." Ni is, on a very very basic level, a time/location marker. It's the 'In the' part of "in the morning' or the 'at' of "at noon". Obviously, that's not the whole story; ni has many more uses but that's all you need to know to make this sentence work.

But seriously seriously, learn your hiragana and katakana before you start going much further with your learning. Romaji will only handicap your understanding of Japanese.

You've done a smashing job explaining this. However, without kanji, you've likely just utterly confused him. You were correct that it makes much more sense in kanji. I'd go so far as to say that, without kanji, a learner will have a terrible time trying to learn to count past, say, nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine.

Desstile 11-17-2009 03:12 AM

Thanks. That really helps. :)

And I can read and write hiragana and katakana and some kanji. I just can't type those on here because I don't know how therefore I use romanji. >.<

We've already covered counting in class...I was just unclear of how counting was with the bigger numbers because it's quite different from English. I'm actually not as much of a beginner as you would think...I swear. >.< lol!

Columbine 11-17-2009 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Desstile (Post 783215)
Thanks. That really helps. :)

And I can read and write hiragana and katakana and some kanji. I just can't type those on here because I don't know how therefore I use romanji. >.<

We've already covered counting in class...I was just unclear of how counting was with the bigger numbers because it's quite different from English. I'm actually not as much of a beginner as you would think...I swear. >.< lol!

You're welcome. If you need help enabling Japanese text on your computer there's a sticky with info how to go about it at the top of the 'Learning Japanese' forum.

Nagoyankee 11-17-2009 11:32 AM

You may already know but I think I might mention the three different pronunciation of 百(ひゃく = hundred) for those who don't.

ひゃく 100, 200, 400, 500, 700, 900

びゃく 300

ぴゃく 600, 800

KyleGoetz 11-18-2009 12:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nagoyankee (Post 783281)
You may already know but I think I might mention the three different pronunciation of 百(ひゃく = hundred) for those who don't.

ひゃく 100, 200, 400, 500, 700, 900

びゃく 300

ぴゃく 600, 800

That's a good note to give! To elaborate on this point, this is an example of rendaku. (Rendaku - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

jesselt 11-18-2009 08:45 AM

If you think basic numbers are hard just wait until you start counting things :D

One of my goals when I go to Japan is to just avoid counting anything at all times.

SHAD0W 11-18-2009 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jesselt (Post 783501)
If you think basic numbers are hard just wait until you start counting things :D

One of my goals when I go to Japan is to just avoid counting anything at all times.

Same. Also, I can't wait to make my first expensive purchase and to stare blankly in panic at the poor shop assistant when (s)he tells me the price and I can't figure it out.. lol


All times are GMT. The time now is 10:19 PM.

SEO by vBSEO 3.0.0 RC6