四

Four

Meaning: Four

Imagine contorting yourself in such a way that your legs end up inside your mouth. You have bent your body in all the wrong ways in order to achieve this. In fact, if you look at yourself, you look like a square now… You’re just a person with four sides.

If you can get to square, you should be able to get to four as well, since squares always have four sides.

Reading: し, よん

To remember the reading し we use Charlie “Sheen.” – To continue the story… you’re all wrapped up and have your feet in your mouth. You decide to keep going, so you turn inside out. When you finally get all the way to the other side, you pop out an opposite person. Guess who that opposite person is? It’s Charlie Sheen.

You’ll want to vividly imagine your feet going deeper and deeper into your mouth, so deep that it causes you to flip backwards and inside out (I know it’s not technically possible, but you can use your imagination). Then, as you split and the opposite side of you comes out, you’re horrified to find out it’s Charlie Sheen.

There’s an alternative reading for this as well, which is よん. The extra reading is there because し sounds too much like 死 (also し and means death). You’ll have to keep that in mind when you take a look at the vocab.

Vocabulary

There’s a lot of things you can do with numbers nowadays (with all that kanji you’ve been learning). This number, which comes later than most numbers, really highlights that. So many words!

a 四（し or よん）＝　Four

• Meaning: The same as the kanji.
• Reading: Same as the on’yomi (numbers tend to be on’yomi, remember?)

a 四月（しがつ）＝　April

• Combo: 四 (four) + 月 (month)
• Meaning: The fourth month is what? January… February… March… April!
• Reading: This is the on’yomi readings, combined.

a 四日（よっか）＝　Fourth day of the month, four days

• Combo: 四 (four) + 日 (day)
• Meaning: The four day is the fourth day… also the fourth day of the month
• Reading: The reading is a bit different from what you might expect. It’s a shortened よつ with an alternative kun’yomi reading for 日. You’ll need to learn this one straight up, or as a set with the other numbers like this.

a 四つ（よっつ）＝　Four Things

• Meaning: Remember this number pattern? Number plus つ means you’re counting “things.” In this case, it’s “Four Things.”
• Reading: Let’s pretend you’re counting yogurt (よ) for 四つ.

a 四千（よんせん）＝　4,000

• Combo: 四 (four) + 千 (thousand)
• Meaning: Four and thousand is four thousand.
• Reading: Know the on’yomi and know the reading of this vocab.

a 四匹（よんひき）＝　4 Small Animals

• Combo: 四 (four) + 匹 (small animals counter)
• Meaning: Pretty self explanatory. This would be used when you need to refer to four cats, dogs, or some other small animal.
• Reading: Just combine the on’yomi readings to know the reading of this vocab!

a 四十（よんじゅう）＝　40

• Combo: 四 (four) + 十 (ten)
• Meaning: Four tens = forty
• Reading: The on’yomi readings put together creates the vocab’s reading.

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