This topic contains 9 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
I’m just doing でした in season 2 and I came to this sentence. 七人じゃりません, which I read as ななにん. Emi reads it しちにん. What’s going on here? I thought the くんよみ was used for counting, which jisho.com shows as ななつ not しち.
Counters are weird, especially 人; they really need to be taken on a case by case basis. I tend not to get caught up in learning what’s kun and what’s on because it’s not that important.
Okay, the くんよみ doesn’t matter so much as having a system. I was following along:
一人 ＝ ひとり good…
二人 ＝ ふたり makes sense…
七人 ＝ しちにん wait… what?
Is it just completely arbitrary and something I’ll have to learn by experience, or is there some logic here?
Also, 七 is a bit of a weird one in that its readings are fairly interchangeable. 四 as well, to a lesser extent.
Incidentally, the kun’yomi of 七 is なな – the つ is the generic counter word.
For 人 as a counter, only 一人 and 二人 are exceptions – the remainder are pretty predictable.
一人 = ひとり
二人 = ふたり
三人 = さんにん
四人 = よにん
五人 = ごにん
などなど
なるほど! (I just like saying that) So 一人 and 二人 are the exceptions, not 七人. Not really that important at my level, but good to have it straight in my head at least. I’ll just have to keep my eyes open for counters! Thanks a lot guys!
Yeah, Koichi kinda teaches numbers backwards – he starts with the exceptions, simply because they’re easier to write…
More useful too. When was the last time you said “septet”? ;-)
Last week. It was a crossword answer. =P
Hmm, that’s almost a coincidence. I used nonet in a crosword last week.
Yeah, that kind of threw me off at first to.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.