3 ms·
All the things described are real features of Japanese counting and are real examples drawn from the Japanese language. There is sometimes variation where a pe
by solidsnack9000 5y ago
All the things described are real features of Japanese counting and are real examples drawn from the Japanese language.
There is sometimes variation where a person needs to learn which each number for which thing uses which system. For example, with people, a common way of counting is "hitori", "futari" (your irregular cases), and then "san nin", "yo nin", ... (your regular cases). It's not always that way; but the flexibility exists and that is quite different from Chinese.
The sound change -hon to -ppon and similar sound changes are not actually regular in Japanese -- there's not a clear phonological rule for them. Although counters don't generally vary in pronunciation for each count of the counter, many of the common ones do; and these variations must be learned per number, per counter.
The earlier commenter spoke to characteristics of Japanese that might seem unique to a student. Counters certainly are shared with Chinese; but these other things -- the variation in the numbers and the variation in the counter, itself -- are not.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fenomas 5y agoSorry, but I don't follow what you're disagreeing with. For the numeric stems there are two systems, and one learns which to use when, as I said. For the sound change, I didn't say it was "regular" (and I don't know what you mean by that here), I said that it's not specific to counters. wiki: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%80%A3%E6%BF%81 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%80%A3%E6%BF%81 As for whether it's unique, wiki suggests that Korean has something similar but I wouldn't know.
- solidsnack9000 5y agoSorry, but what are you saying is not in accord with the examples I gave or the rules I described? My earlier comment did discuss Korean, by the way.
- lhorie 5y ago> The sound change -hon to -ppon and similar sound changes are not actually regular in Japanese -- there's not a clear phonological rule for them. There is a loose rule for compound word contractions (adding tenten to the first letter of the second word), e.g. "sakura" gains a tenten in "senbonzakura". However, as you said, this is not universally the case. For example, "ehon" (lit. drawing book) is simply "e" (drawing) + "hon" (book), not "ebon".