Counter word

List · 24 Jun 2024

In Japanese, learning to count object is a pretty laborious task. That is because Japanese has Counter words. Counter words are often single kanji character that you need to place in a sentence when you are counting an object. Different object needs to be counted using a different counter word.

For instance, if you want to say “There is one plate”, you need to say “皿が一枚あります”. In the Japanese sentence、皿 is the word refering to “Plate”, 一 is the word specifying “One” and あります is the verb “There is”. So what is 枚? 枚 is read as まい and is the counter word to use when counting flat object such as plates. This word doesn’t appear in the english sentence “There is one plate”, but it is necessary in the Japanese sentence. So when you to count something, you need to know what the correct counter for that word is. And, according to Tofugu’s guide on counters, there are over 500 counters.

Another difficulty with counter words is that they change the way to read numbers in Japanese. As you might have learned when studying kanji, Japanese as two differents types of readings, 音読み “onyomi” and 訓読み “kunyomi”. The onyomi are Chinese derived readings for a kanji while the kunyomi are native Japanese readings for kanji. Because of this, there are two different ways to count from 1 to 10. The most common way is to use onyomi いち、に、さん、し、ご、ろく、しち、はち、きゅう、じゅう. The kunyomi ひと、ふた、み、よん、いつ、む、なな、や、ここの、とお, are less comonly used. When counting object, the counter you are using is what determines which reading to use. This means that, not only do you need to learn what counter to use for a certain word, you also need to learn what readings to use for that counter.

In this post, I am going to write down every counters that I have encountered In Japanese so far as well as their readings.

っつ, generic counter for any “thing”

Numeral	Japanese	Reading
1	一つ	ひとつ
2	二つ	ふたつ
3	三つ	みっつ
4	四つ	よっつ
5	五つ	いつつ
6	六つ	むっつ
7	七つ	ななつ
8	八つ	やっつ
9	九つ	ここのつ
10	十	とお
100	百	ひゃく
How many	いくつ	いくつ

個, generic counter for anything that have a boundary

Numeral	Japanese	Reading
1	一個	いっこ
2	二個	にこ
3	三個	さんこ
4	四個	よんこ
5	五個	ごこ
6	六個	ろっこ
7	七個	ななこ
8	八個	はっこ
9	九個	きゅうこ
10	十個	じゅっこ
100	百個	ひゃっこ
How many	何個	なんこ

隻, counter for large ship

Numeral	Japanese	Reading
1	一隻	いっせき
2	二隻	にせき
3	三隻	さんせき
4	四隻	よんせき
5	五隻	ごせき
6	六隻	ろくせき
7	七隻	ななせき
8	八隻	はっせき
9	九隻	きゅうせき
10	十隻	じゅっせき
100	百隻	ひゃくせき
How many	何隻	なんせき