Lesson Three: Numbers
Now that we’ve eased into Japanese with some familiar words, let’s cover something that everyone is familiar with. Numbers! すうじ(suuji)! Numbers are very useful and are easy to remember. Let’s get started.
Here are one through five. Give them a touch to see how they are spoken. Notice that when you touch the Japanese words in the table below they will change between Japanese and romaji.
one | ichi | いち |
two | ni | に |
three | san | さん |
four | yon | よん |
five | go | ご |
Now, here are 6 through 10. Touch them on and off to check your memory.
six | roku | ろく |
seven | shichi | しち |
eight | hachi | はち |
nine | kyuu | きゅう |
ten | juu | じゅう |
It’s time for a quick quiz. I know you’ll do well!
GAME: Multiple choice
To use numbers to their fullest extent in Japanese, you’ll need to know counters. Counters tell the numbers what kind of thing they are counting. They can be a little confusing, so we’ll cover them in a later lesson.
Some simply counters that don’t make us change how the numbers are said are えん(en) “yen” and ねん(nen) “years.” See how they are used below.
five yen | go en | 五円 |
ten yen | juu en | 十円 |
This is small change though. 1 yen is only worth about a penny.
In the phrases below is says “year” first because it is telling the number of the year, not how many years there are.
year three | san nen | 三年 |
year seven | shichi nen | 七年 |
Even if you don’t know the correct counter yet, you should practice counting things in Japanese. Remember that practice makes perfect, or at least very good!
Here are the numbers from 11 to 15, so you can count even higher! Notice that we’re putting ten before the number we want to say. This works all the way up to 19.
eleven | juuichi | じゅういち |
twelve | juuni | じゅうに |
thirteen | juusan | じゅうさん |
fourteen | juuyon | じゅうよん |
fifteen | juugo | じゅうご |
You’re doing well do far! I think you deserve a new game. Give it a try!
GAME: Hit-a-word
Remember that you need to master all the words in a lesson to move on to the next one! I know you can do it!
