Counting!

Yay!  Let's learn to count!  lolll

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Numbers
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1 一 [いち/ichi]
2 二 [に/ni]
3 三 [さん/san]
4 四 [よん/yon][し/shi]
5 五 [ご/go]
6 六 [ろく/roku]
7 七 [なな/nana][しち/shichi]
8 八 [はち/hachi]
9 九 [きゅう/kyū][く/ku]
10 十 [じゅう/jū]
11, 12...  十一 [じゅういち/jūichi], 十二 [じゅうに/jūni], etc etc
20, 30...  二十 [にじゅう/nijū], 三十 [さんじゅう/sanjū], etc etc
45 四十五 [よんじゅうご/yonjūgo]  (example)
100 百 [ひゃく/hyaku]
1,000 千 [せん/sen]
10,000 万 [まん/man]
100,000 十万 [じゅうまん/jūman]

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Often I see numbers in Arabic numerals rather than kanji, but it is still used often.  As far as numbers like 14, 53, 2054, etc go- If you see a number before the larger number, you multiply it.  If the number is after the larger number, you add it.  

四十五  4*10 = 40 + 5 = 45  
七百十九 7*100 = 700 + 10 + 9 = 719   

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A couple things to note- There are multiple different counters for objects.  Examples on wiki- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese… counter is something you attach to the end of a number when you are counting objects.  The pronunciation often changes slightly, sometimes more drastically.  ex. - 人[ひと/hito] - person

一人 [ひとり/hitori] - 1 person/alone/by yourself
二人 [ふたり/futari] - 2 people
三人 [さんにん/sannin] - 3 people
四人 [よにん/yonin] - 4 people

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二千十一年三月二十七日
nisenjuuichi-nen san-gatsu nijuunijūshichi-nichi
(Today's date, probably yesterday by the time you read this) Much more often seen as 2011年3月27日  Probably because its 100x easier to read.  >_>
日曜日[nichiyōbi]  Sunday
年[ねん/nen] - year
月[gatsu] - month
日[nichi**] - day

**Months and days of the week are fairly easy but days of the month are pretty irregular - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese… something you just have to work at a bit to memorize.

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Another thing to note about counting-

1,000 千 [せん/sen]
10,000 万 [まん/man]
100,000 十万 [じゅうまん/jūman]

In English we count things as one thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand but in Japanese it's more like thousand, (tenthousand), ten (tenthousand)'s  or  1000; 10000; 10,0000

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Example from Bleach
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一つ [ひとつ/hitotsu] - 1
二つ [ふたつ/futatsu] - 2
三つ [みっつ/mittsu] - 3

Ending 6 - My Pace, Sunset Switch  www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQipIp…

Well, shit.  Look at that.  It even has the romaji all written out for you.  Gogo random youtube find.  Score.  Might be a good thing to watch all the way through to help your listening.  *shrug*

These are numbers you use when you're counting uncategorized things.

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Character Names
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Ukitake Juushirou - 浮竹 十四郎
浮[うき/uki] - japanese.nciku.com/search/all/… float/exceed
竹[たけ/take] - bamboo
十四[じゅうし/jūshi] - fourteen
郎[ロウ] - www.saiga-jp.com/cgi-bin/dic.c… man (Common ending for boy's names. e.g. Toushirou 冬獅郎...  Although neither name uses the kanji for white- 白 [しろ/shiro] Ukitake's excuse for giving Toushirou candy is because they are both "Shiro-chan".  It was also probably a factor when they were named.  Ichigo will always deny that he was named Strawberry, but you can't really think that his parents were oblivious to the other meanings of Ichigo.  He was also born on the 15th [1 一 ichi; 5 五 go (15 would be 十五 jūgo though)] as well as being a silly lil' berry-head.)

Zaraki Kenpachi - 更木 剣八
更木 - The area he's from, Zaraki.
剣[けん/ken] - sword
八[パチ/pachi] - japanese.nciku.com/search/all/… Eight, all around

It's common for pronunciations to change slightly when the kanji are put together.  Usually just changing from  ハ -> パ;  ha -> pa; hachi -> pachi  
It simply adds the little "ten-ten" or "maru" to it.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakuten

Oh lookies!  Another reason to learn your kana!  gogo en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana

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If you have questions, feel free to ask.  Another fairly short lesson but numbers and counters are quite a large topic to cover everything.  There are just too many pronunciation variations.  Again, another reason to learn kana.  www.guidetojapanese.org/number… Examples -

300 三百 さんびゃく  sanbyaku
600 六百 ろっぴゃく  roppyaku
800 八百 はっぴゃく  happyaku
3000 三千 さんぜん    sanzen
8000 八千 はっせん    hassen

Counters are a huuuuge topic.  I'll probably go over a few of them later, but there are just too many to cover them all here.

Next lesson I'd like to go over some commonly used words that you should recognize from watching anime.  If you have any words you were wondering about, leave them in a comment and I'll cover them next week.

じゃまた
See ya.