“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Marthe Troly-Curtin
Years are the biggest amount of time we’ll be looking at. At least in terms of what humans can comprehend, almost any amount of time can be counted in years. When things get too big, you just switch to light years (光年). So, this is where we’re going to start. It will give us a great jumping off point.
The great thing about years is that there’s nothing weird about them. With days you have a special day counter (六日＝むいか, for example) that you have to memorize. Years is only the number of years plus the word 年 (ねん). Nothing particularly fancy about that. This simplicity will help us to go over some of the specific time-based sentence structure you’ll need for all of these time-related lessons.
For now, just read through these and put as much as you can in your head. You’ll practice these as well as continue to go over the “bigger picture” concepts when you look at the other time-chapters.
This Year, Last Year, Next Year
To start things off we’re going to cover some vocabulary, essentially. These are words you probably know already, too.
a 今年（ことし）＝ This Year
a 去年（きょねん）＝ Last Year
a 来年（らいねん）＝ Next Year
You’ll be seeing similar (though not exactly the same) patterns when learning about days, months, and weeks as well, so if you don’t know these now you will by the end of this section. A common place to see these words is at the beginning of a sentence. For example:
a 今年の夏は暑い。
This year’s summer is hot.
a 今年は良かったです。
This year was good.
a 去年は雨が多かった。
Last year there was a lot of rain.
a 去年はボビーさんに車をあげた。
Last year I gave Bobby a car.
a 来年からベジタリアンになります。
I’ll become a vegetarian from next year.
a 来年東京に行くつもりです。
I plan to go to Tokyo next year.
90% of the time “year-word” sentences will look something like this, where the “year-word” will start out the sentence. You’ll mostly see this pattern continue, so keep it in your mind. The three things you need to take with you from this section are these three words. If you do that, you’ll be able to practice and use them going forward.
Specific Years
So now you know how to talk about general year-related things. What about when you need to specify the year? That’s quite easy. You’ve learned the kanji 年 which has the reading of ねん, right? Well, all you need to do is stick that onto the end of a number. So as long as you can read the number, you can read a year, too.
a ２０１２年 ＝ にせんじゅうにねん
a ５７３年 ＝ ごひゃくななじゅうさんねん
But did you know that the Japanese also use their own year system? It’s based on the current era. For example, right now is Heisei 24, which would be read as へいせいにじゅうよんねん. Since both are used, it’s good to understand this system. One easy way to remember what Heisei year it is involves some simple subtraction, but I believe in you. All you need to do is take the current year, subtract 2000, then add 12. It looks like:
2012 – 2000 = 12
12 + 12 = 24
へいせい２４年
Isn’t that nice and easy? Of course, you can just use the regular Western year names too.
Nth Year
The “nth year,” (i.e. the 40th year) involves a counter you’ve seen before but probably don’t recognize as a counter (目). Luckily for you, the reading is the same (め), so you don’t have to learn anything new there. You will have to learn this new way of using it, though. It looks like this.
a １年目
First year
a ５年目
Fifth year
a １００年目
100th year
That’s all fine and dandy, but how is it used? Probably how you’d expect for the most part. Because this has to do with a specific amount of time, you’ll see a lot more に and で particles getting used.
a １年目で大学から卒業した。
In the first year I graduated from college.
a ２年目の初めにフットボールをした。
In the beginning of the second year I did football.
Maybe you noticed. When you’re talking about something happening in the nth year, you will use で (because that’s the particle that talks about things happening at or in a certain place, in this case that “place” is time itself). When you’re talking about a specific portion of that nth year, you use の because that portion belongs to that nth year. Sometimes you’ll see に being used as well when you’re talking about a something happening with the nth year.
Before you move on, just remember that 目 is the counter for “nth number of ____.” It will be used again.
Number Of Years
Lastly, we’re going to take a look at the number of years, as in “three years” or “forty two years.” This is different from the nth year because here you’re simply stating “for how many years,” not just the last one in a series.
a ３年間
Three years
a １年間
One year
a ５０年間
Fifty years
These numbers represent the entireties of the years as one package. Look at the examples to see what I mean:
a 私は５年間アメリカにいます。
I have been in America for five years.
a 私はトムさんを１年間知っている。
I have known Tom for one year.
a 私は４０年間日本語をべんきょうしていた。
I have been studying Japanese for 40 years.
You can talk about the things you’ve been doing for X amount of time now. Notice how て-form gets used there to show that something is occurring over a period of time? Instead of べんきょうした (studied) it’s べんきょうしていた (have been studying) and instead of 知る (knew) it’s 知っている (have known). て-form really helps with time.
At this point, I would consider reading through everything again. Try to make sure you understand everything here before moving on. We will practice it, so you don’t have to be able to regurgitate everything perfectly, but it is important that you have the concepts make sense in your head.