Hahi ichi
7 (shichi) also sounds similar to death, and 9 (ku) sounds like 苦 (ku) that means suffering. This word means death, very similar to Chinese. However, there is another word in Japanese that is 死 (shi). Those second pronunciations were created because of “avoided words” that sound like something unfortunate.įor example originally, 4 was pronounced as (shi). The best way to remember those correctly is… to practice, practice, and practice.
In some situations, either one is correct, but in many situations, only one of them is applicable. Just remember the pronunciation differs across both languages (apart from the number 3 which is the same)! NumberĪs you see, some of them have multiple pronunciations. Japanese Numbers – 1 to 10ĭID YOU KNOW – if you already know Mandarin Chinese, the numbers in Kanji are EXACTLY the same. For now let’s focus on the basics of Japanese numbers. In Kanji you can save your energy and forget about writing lots of long numbers.Īnyway big numbers are coming later. Think about when you want to write a big number like ONE BILLION, that would be 1,000,000,000. In addition, in terms of big numbers, Kanji numbers are so convenient. While standard numbers are basically used to count something, like “100円” (hyaku-en = 100yen) and “5歳” (go-sai = 5 years old), Kanji numbers are used mainly for nouns and idioms that include numbers partly, like “四国” (shi-koku = one of the regions in western Japan) and “一部” (ichi-bu = a part). So essentially the number one can be written as 1 or 一 (think of when you write “one” out using the English alphabet – that’s the same as using Kanji! HOWEVER – there are also Kanji (一, 二, 三…) that are applicable for every number. Of course, the numbers you know and love already are the most typical.
Play Japanese Numbers – AN IMPORTANT NOTEįirst of all, you should know that there are two ways to write number in Japanese.