Counting To A Million +
“If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?” - Steven Wright
I’m not sure what you expected, but a million seems like a lot of numbers to learn in one chapter. Oh well, it’s happening whether you like it or not. So, you’ve gotten up to 1,000. There are two steps we’ll take on this page, because I think you understand the pattern pretty well. First, 1,000 – 10,000… Then, 10,000 to a million. The second step seems really big, but it’s not as big as you think. You already know how to do all of this, it’s just a matter of putting the right things together (and taking a look at the exceptions that are going on).
Let’s start with 1,000 to 10,000. The word for one thousand is せん. Let’s start with the number reference skeleton you’ll work around.
1,000 = せん (thousand) or いっせん (one thousand)*
2,000 = にせん
3,000 = さんぜん* Uses “ぜん” instead of “せん”
4,000 = よんせん* Uses the alternative “four”
5,000 = ごせん
6,000 = ろくせん
7,000 = ななせん* Uses the alternative “seven”
8,000 = はっせん* This is a weird exception, take note!
9,000 = きゅうせん
*The only really weird one up there is the first one, せん vs. いっせん. The difference here is the difference between the words “thousand” and “one thousand.” They mean the same things, but are used slightly differently. For the number 1,000, you’d say いっせん (because it’s one thousand). But, if you were to say 2,000, you’d say にせん (and not にいっせん, because that wouldn’t make sense). Do you see the difference? Only use いっせん if you’re specifically saying the word “one thousand.”
Now let’s practice with these and see what we can do with them. We won’t spend too much time here, because I want you to get to practicing all the numbers sooner rather than later. Take note of the weird ones / exceptions, and translate these numbers into Japanese.
1,000
いっせん
2,023
にせんにじゅうさん
2,523
にせんごひゃくにじゅうさん
8,500
はっせんごひゃく
8,501
はっせんごひゃくいち
9,999
きゅうせんきゅうひゃくきゅうじゅうきゅう
5,005
ごせんご
7,342
ななせんさんびゃくよんじゅうに
Going up above 10,000 is just as simple. Let’s take a look at the 10,000′s.
10,000 = いちまん
20,000 = にまん
30,000 = さんまん
40,000 = よんまん
50,000 = ごまん
60,000 = ろくまん
70,000 = ななまん
80,000 = はちまん
90,000 = きゅうまん
These follow the same pattern as before.
10,000
いちまん
15,000
いちまんごせん
15,300
いちまんごせんさんびゃく
15,370
いちまんごせんさんびゃくななじゅう
15,379
いちまんごせんさんびゃくななじゅうきゅう
It gets to be quite the mouthful, but the pattern will always stay pretty faithful, meaning that if you know the numbers 1-10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000, you should be able to say almost any number (at least until numbers start becoming less useful).
Now, from here on out there’s a bit of a trick. There’s no “word” for 100,000 like the other ones (100 = ひゃく, 1,000 = せん, 10,000 = まん). Instead of having a word for 100,000… you just say じゅうまん (the numbers for 10 + 10,000). I feel that beyond 100,000, numbers stop being very useful for most people, so we aren’t going to cover too much of this, but I will show you how to do all of these really quickly so that you can pull it out of your memory if you actually ever need to.
100,000 = じゅうまん (10+10,000)
1,000,000 = ひゃくまん (100+10,000)
10,000,000 = いっせんまん (1,000 + 10,000)
After 10 million, there is a new word you could learn if you wanted, but as I mentioned before, probably not all that useful for most people. If you want to do 100,000,000 (that’s 100 million), you’d use the word おく (億).
100,000,000 = いちおく
1,000,000,000 = じゅうおく
10,000,000,000 = ひゃくおく
100,000,000,000 = いっせんおく
And that’s where we’re going to stop… If you ever need numbers beyond that… well, you’re better at math than I. Hopefully you’ll almost never need to know past じゅうまん (100,000). If you do, then you know how to do it. These all follow the same patterns you learned for smaller numbers. Just keep tacking parts on, and you’ll be able to count to a bajillion (which is totally a real number).
What I really want you to do, now, though, is use these numbers. You aren’t going to learn about “counters” right now (counters basically are used to count a huge variety of things in Japanese… and they’re a bit different from the numbers you just learned), but there are plenty of things we can do with the numbers themselves. The next few pages will be dedicated to that (so you can practice your numbers and learn something new).