Maybe this is reflective of the Japanese language’s ongoing evolution. In the same way that many Japanese began to use Chinese loan words and phrases over a thousand years ago, perhaps what is occurring today with English is the same. Maybe a couple centuries down the line we’d have kanji with not only Sino-Japanese and Native Japanese readings, but Anglo-Japanese readings as well.
@@riowhi7 Even though Japan is under US occupation (e.g., see the CIA fight against the movement to remove article 9 from the Japanese constitution and other WW2-related provisions), it's not the language of government, so it's unlikely.
Oh this is a good point to bring up regarding the “weirdness” of Japanese numbers. It should look foreign to English speakers. 白飯を二百グラムぐらい食べた… 今日はお客さんが店に百人以上来た… In English they have adverbial “a lot”, right? I kind of see it as a very restricted version of Japanese number adverbs, though I don’t know if that is accurate. Perhaps another way to look at it is that they behave similarly to “x times”, “for x hours” and the like. “林檎を三回食べた” (∅ ate apple three‐time) is structurally very similar to “林檎を三個食べた” (∅ ate apple three‐object). Also “部屋に三時間いた” (∅ was in room three‐hour; I stayed in the room for three hours) is similar to “部屋に三人いた” (∅ was in room three‐person; There were three people in the room). I remembered it’s called 遊離数量詞 (floating quantifier) in the linguistics jargon.
Thanks, I hope it made sense to you guys. I thought it’s beneficial to clarify that in the last example “三人” (three‐person) by itself doesn’t “fill the subject slot” - it merely gives additional info on the number of the implied subject, which can be anything depending on the context. Here are some examples with an explicit subject : 警官が部屋に三時間いた。 cop was in room three‐hour A cop stayed in the room for three hours. 警官が部屋に三人いた。 cop was in room three‐person There were three cops in the room. (Other non‐cop people could be there too, not included in the count.) Also it would be fun to have an example where the number adverb is super‐separated from the supposedly modified noun : 今日は客が昨日と違って店に百人以上来た。 as for today customer differently from yesterday came to shop hundred‐person‐or‐more Today, unlike yesterday, more than a hundred customers came to the shop. The examples I’ve given are all natural ways to say these things; they don’t sound particularly artificial to me as a native speaker.
I am by no means a proficient Japanese speaker but I always parsed a sentence like "ringo wa boku ga sanko tabeta" (excuse the romaji) as "with regards to apples, I ate three", which isn't that weird in English imo. I just figured it was one of those quirky phrasings that had become standard through some kind of politeness or social norms, kind of like all those "il y a" constructions in French. I don't know if that made any sense, but I appreciate you making me think about it. As for other weird numeral stuff, Danish has some pretty strange number names for multiples of 10, not unlike French. Like "halvtreds" for 50, which comes from "halvtredje snes", halvtredje translating directly to "half third" but means "two and a half", and snes being a score. Then we also put the smaller number before the multiple of ten, so "fem og halvtreds" is 55, translating to "five and two-and-a-half scores". No one parses it that way though, most people don't think in scores. What is most weird to me though is that no other Germanic that I can think of language does anything remotely like this. All of the others just have some variation of "five tens and five".
If you want a more literal translation, it could be “concerning apples, I ate three wholes of them”, where “san-ko” contrasts with e.g. “san-kire” meaning “three slices”
Yeah and when i was looking for explanation down the comments of a video talking about danish number i found a dude that explained it why it was like that and how people think about it. I didn't find it difficult bc Albania has scores and like only 2 (nje zet and dy zet) scores and unlike french there's no 1×20+11 we just continue normal base 10 with 30 and 50 onward. So you just have to like learn word for 20 and for 40 and that's it, though there is a variation in sicily where some might use 3 and 4 score(tre zet katrë zet). So that does make it easier to learn french and danish numbers for me in a way, but I'm not learning french or danish, so i don't remember much.
4:22 This second sentence can actually be translated somewhat literally in English- given that は is a topic marker and not just subject marker, you could translate the sentence as: "As for the apples, I ate three of them" Where you can separate the noun and the number in a similar way (Just for perspective on how this can make sense)
To my ear that sounds like an antiquated way of speaking in english. It is correct, but would sound very odd to the ear. It makes me wonder if that was one of the shifts that occurred in English as it adopted more French practices.
I think part of the reason the reason the counters like 少し and たくさん are used that way are because of Japanese particles. As particles mark the noun with it’s purpose in the sentence, you can place the counter wherever, because you already know what is being counted. In りんごは少し食べた for example, the latter part of the sentence says: ate a a little. What did you eat? Well, the は particle marks the topic so you probably ate the sentence’s topic aka the apples. The adverb could be moved and the sentence will still make sense: 少しはりんごを食べ; 食べたことは、少しりんご…
another commenter mentioned spanish ordinals, which are quite similar to what i'm describing here, but let me talk about portuguese ordinals. they aren't that weird morphologically: the only thing that may be weird to an english speaker is that all number words become ordinal - you don't say "twenty-first" but "twentieth-first" (vigésimo primeiro). the problem though is that the words are *all* latinisms (at least for 10 and over). like, loaned from latin, and they don't exactly look like the normal numbers, they're formed irregularly from the perspective of a modern speaker. 'first' through 'tenth' are common, everyday words: primeiro 'first' segundo 'second' terceiro 'third' quarto 'fourth', quinto, sexto, sétimo, oitavo, nono, décimo. everyone knows and uses these. eleventh is décimo primeiro 'tenth first', then décimo segundo for 12th, and so on, up to décimo nono, 19th. 20th is vigésimo, then vigésimo primeiro, vigésimo segundo..., until you get to 30th, trigésimo. up to trigésimo the words are common, and you can expect everyone to know those words and probably to use them. 40 onwards is more complicated though; fortieth is quadragésimo, then fiftieth is quinquagésimo. sexagésimo 60th, septuagésimo 70th, octagésimo 80th (pedants say octogésimo but -a- is far more common), nonagésimo 90th. with these numbers, the higher you go, the less common they become. everyone understands these words, but we don't really use them, we wouldn't really say that someone finished a race in "fifty-second" place with the ordinal quinquagésimo segundo, we'd just say, no lugar cinquenta e dois, on place 52. 100th is centésimo, and this is a common word because it's a fraction (it's also used for fractional seconds, cinco segundos e trinta e quatro centésimos '5.43 seconds'), and also because you can use it hyperbolically. 200th is ducentésimo. no one who isn't a massive nerd uses this word, and most people don't know it, although they will recognize what it means because of the morphology. 300th, 400th, and so on, are very, very rare. the forms sound ridiculous to any normal speakers (what the hell is septingentésimo 'seven hundredth', lmao). 1 000th is milésimo, 10⁶th is milionésimo. these are common words because they're used fractionally and hyperbolically.
It’s also interesting how fractions don’t quite match the ordinals, even though they clearly have the same origin. Except for small numbers (up to 3), a number’s inverse matches exactly its ordinal form if and only if it’s “simple”: so 1/20 is “um vigésimo”, and 1/9 is “um nono”. But when the ordinal is not “simple”, the inverse is just the cardinal form, followed by the suffix -avo, from “oitavo” (8th). So 1/14 isn’t “um décimo quarto”, but “um catorze avo”, and 1/36 isn’t “um trigésimo sexto”, but “um trinta e seis avo”. I wonder if that could be extended to ordinals, making them regular again.
Cool video. I didn't know about this and will start noticing it now in Japanese. I just came across your channel: one suggestion I have for the video: Can you increase the volume? It is noticeably quieter than other videos I watch (like the History of Chinese letters)
I was just thinking about why number+classifier in Japanese sentences sounds so intuitive for me (Thai native). But maybe it's just because number+classifier can be detached from noun in Thai, too. Maybe it's a feature that come from the pro-drop nature of Thai and Japanese
i noticed this while learning japanese, but i like it. when translating between japanese and english i find myself starting with “english” sentences like “new books, i want two volumes of them” or “today, with friends -five people-, soccer i will play”
in english and arabic, the numbers between 10 and 20 have like their own system, in javanese this goes for numbers between 10 and 30, also there are som number with unique naming like 25 (selawe, means one lawe), 50 (seket, means one ket?), 60 (sewidak, menas one widak?) but ther is no two lawe, etc.
Thai has really close if not the same classifier and splitting by particles "quirks" as Japanese. Counter are often separated from the noun by a filler word/auxillary/particle and rarely does the counter come before the noun. However, Thai doesn't have a separation between adjective and adverb, so it is hard to say if counter is one or the other. Additionally, in Thai, one has a special property. You can have either หนึ่งแผ่น /nueng˩.paen˩/ or แผ่นนึง /paen˩.nueng˧/; both meaning "one sheet". Here, แผ่น /paen˩/ is a classifier, meaning sheet. Both หนึ่ง /nueng˩/ and นึง /nueng˧/ mean 1, but they are not interchangable. Also, แผ่นหนึ่ง /paen˩.nueng˩/ is used with a different meaning, but นึงแผ่น /nueng˧.paen˩/ is not used. In contrast, English has 2 numeral systems, cardinal and ordinal - which is "weird" for me. Edit: typo
Russian allows you to put numerals before and after the noun, with a change in meaning. Numeral + noun is standard, whereas noun + numeral adds the uncertainty. "Ya potratil dollarov 20" = "I spent maybe around 20 dollars".
Counting in hundreds is strange in Polish - the first five go like this: Sto (literally just"Hundred") Dwieście ("Twohundreds", the hundred part is also pluralosed, but in an alternative way. It's especially odd, because it doesn't do this to thousands of any other place value.) Czysta (Threehundreds" the hundred is pluralised again, but normally) Czterysta (Fourhundreds" same story as 300) Pięćset ("Fivehundred" a different word is used for hundred and it is no longer plural. This pattern says consistent for all the following hundreds.
really neat video. very insightful and well researched. one thing I'd suggest to note is that your video is very quiet. you can see if you right click on this video and click "Stats for nerds" it says "(content loudness -14.9dB)". ideally it should be around 0, although a couple dB lower is fine. for perspective, -7.0dB is where it will already start sounding quiet. turning up the volume to reach this point will make a more comfortable viewing experience for viewers, and prevent the issue where they turn up their volume very high to hear your video, and then getting blasted by very loud sound on the next average loudness video they watch. a quick way to do this is by using "normalizing". most video editors have this feature, which is where your audio will automatically be turned up to this point for you. just some feedback which might be helpful for your next upload. good luck, and keep up the good work
Месяц назад+1
I think the best way to model the Japanese number system is, like you said, taking the "two glasses of water" structure to the extreme, where all nouns are uncountable and you need a unit to actually refer to what you're counting.
I think I've definitely tended towards thinking of counters in Japanese as adverbs (though part of that might be the influence of the late Cure Dolly). It's definitely not a thought you're alone in having!
The Japanese wikipedia page for counters also specifically lists the phrase 「3倍明るい」 ("three times brighter") which is a pretty compelling example for counters (at least sometimes) acting adverbially
I really couldn't tell you if the number is adverbial or not, I only study Japanese for speaking/reading. That is to say, I don't have a particular interest and/or expertise in linguistics. From my point of view this is purely a matter of convenience, if you are to recall the number of something, you can say something like 「犬が。。。。３匹いました。」 pausing to remember how many there were. When you separate the subject, or object from their particle, it just sounds kind of wrong. It may be a plebeian perspective but it feels right to me. My experience is limited to only 5 years of Japanese study every day, so I am only just a beginner though, I wish I could explain this better.
Your analysis is correct: The adverbial use of numbers is much more natural. You can even use the number-adverbs without the noun: At a rental car shop, you might say ニ台借りたいんですけど (I'd like to rent two) without saying "car" at all. You might suspect this "two" is a sort of pronoun but it's not. If it were a noun or a pronoun, you should be able to say 「二台があります(There are two)」「二台を借ります(I'll rent two)」, which are unnatural. Japanese is a verb centric language and everything else is optional as long as there is a verb. 「借ります(rent)」「車を借ります(rent a car)」「私が借ります(I rent)」「三時に借ります(rent at three o'clock)」「二台借ります(rent two)」 . . . all these are natural and correct sentences. That's why numbers-as-adverb are useful: When you don't need to say "car", you don't in Japanese; you just say "two" as an adverb.
I still don't get the point why it's weird. For things that can be commonly referred to in many possible quantities that warrants clarification like "two slices of apple", "paper thee sheets", "five piles of papers" when you are talking about physical quantities of paper needs quantifiers. Only when the exact quantity doesn't matter that you can omit the quantifier "I graded two papers" "I shared two interesting papers related to my study today" To me a quantifier is always hinted but in European languages it can be omitted when ambiguity is low, but a hidden quantifier underlying the grammar is still there. Just in Eastern Asian languages the omission is less observed because we are more sensitive to the ambiguity. We just can't stand the itch of think about what does it mean by "two apples", "two slices"? "two containers"? "two acres"? "two what"!? And have to give a unit for the whole fruit, just to relieve the ambiguity
@@play005517 counters aren’t weird, it’s the spitting of the numeral from the noun that’s weird. It would be like if “I graded three papers last night can’t become “papers I graded thee” in English.
@@TrueSchwar Oh I see. It's like the situation A: "I ate apples." B: "How many?" A: "Three." where A may anticipate it and shorten the conversation to A: "I ate apples. [realizes the obvious question and answers before B explicitly asking] Three. " and this happens fairly frequently so it just becomes: A: "I ate apples, three." my speculation is when this post-noun clarification of counters happens more and more often (maybe because Japanese sentence structures to make it more predisposed to the delayed clarification?) the separation of the counters and the noun becomes recognized and used more deliberated and naturally or it can be viewed with the lens of complex case system, in some languages like Slavic you can technically rearrange around the words in a sentence and remains roughly the same meaning (with different emphasis) while still remain grammatically correct because every words more or less are changed to their correct case to distinguish their S O V role. In Japanese, similar things happens with the particles and markers, you can freely move around many things and omit a lot of them as long as you mark them with correct particle. so under this system counters and nouns can be decoupled and moved around for expressive purpose as long as you mark them correctly.
It may be super terrible, but saying twenty die instead of twenty four sounds awesome. Or I guess something like deaf would be closer, because it isn't exactly the same.
@@I_Love_LearningIn fact the Sino Japanese readings for 4 and death are identical, as in Middle Chinese and many modern Chinese languages (including Mandarin), the only difference between the two words is the tone. As a result, when they were loaned into Japanese, they were rendered exactly the same (shi) due to Japanese having no tones to distinguish them
@@scurly0792 "Japanese doesn't have tones." and other hilarious lies you can tell yourself! To be fair it is true that pitch-accent can't really affect し because it's only 1 mora but it doesn't mean Japanese doesn't have tones.
The nominal is detached from the noun but NOT from the verb. The nominal needs to stay close to the verb for it to be natural and easy to understand. The ending is way more important.
Yea, Japanese numbers are really weird both for having two number systems they use at the same time and because of the way the numbers are used. Your last remark about how the way Japanese is classified as a 'Numeral-Noun' language points to something linguistics as a study makes. Linguistics is so focused categorizing it tends to overlook the variability within languages. In English there are two ways to make plurals: adding S to the end of words, or fronting the vowel in a word (like in 'mouse' to 'mice'). And you have words like 'moose' where it has three ways people make it into a plural: 'mooses', 'meese', and 'moose'. What is the proper way to make it into a plural. My argument is there is no proper way and it's all just different forms of the same word. So that's my argument for Japanese, it can be two types at the same time. (I hope this made sense)
Yeah when studying latin I just got used to it. Old Tupi, a native language of Pindoretama (brasil) just lets u place the number both after and before a noun. "Apŷaba mosapyr asepîak" / "Mosapyr apŷaba asepîak" --> I see three men (Mosapyr is 3)
@@TrueSchwar hmmm maybe if you use the number as a noun? Like "Apŷaba xeremipotara Peroretame mosapyramo oîkó." --> The three men that a like in Portugal. Literally: the men that I like in Portugal are three-ly"
@@TrueSchwar omg, you're really using Latex? honestly I'm a bit shocked to see Latex user in the wild haha. Would you mind share the template? I'm trying to learn to make a better beamer presentation myself and yours is super simple but still pleasant to look at
@@markuslanggeng Oh. uh..., I actually meant I don't use LaTeX... all my slides are prepared in adobe Illustrator and assembled in Premier (borrowing my mother's subscription like the broke ass college student I am). My good friend has been trying to convert me for years now, but I've always struggled with it so never made the leap from Word/Pages (yes I use pages).
I wanna say, it's really nothing wrong with "僕は林檎三個を食べた。". It's rather common. Even "を" is omittable like "僕は林檎三個食べた。". In this case it sounds a bit casual.
French speaker (from France) here. The way we use numbers is normal, but the numbers themselves are *very* weird. 60 = soixante (sixty), pretty close to italian/spanish 70 = soixante-dix (sixty-ten), pretty not close to italian/spanish 80 = quatre-vingts (four-twenties), what ? 90 = quatre-vingts-dix (four-twenties and ten), good luck
Since the word orders are different from Chinese, Japanese had to resort to some creative mechanisms. は is something akin to "with respect to"--seems to me.
Eh, I don’t see it as it being that bad but, it is different from the “normal” system. Counting is done in the same way just with different words. For example, Mexico’s current legislature is the 66th, so it’s referred to as: Sexagésima Sexta. In normal numbers it’d be Sesenta y Seis. They both mean the same: Six Tens and Six, they just use different words.
this is because the higher ordinals in spanish are all latin loans, not really a natural part of the language but an artificial insertion by nerds who thought an ordinal for the number 300 was really necessary portuguese does the exact same thing - i wrote a longer comment about it under this same video
Is it just me, or it feels like number are attached to verb instead of the noun? Like it is "Apple" Three pieces, Ate. / "Apple" Three times, Ate. I talked to GPT, and it agreed with me, but it isn't a very good source. on other hand, maybe I'm wrong. In Russian, sentence is more or less just a jumble of worlds, without any regard to where, they are. Generally, it will warp accent, any there is "Generally used" way of ordering words.
I consider the counters like pronouns, but they only link a number to the thing it’s counting. They’re like a gender system in a way: medium to small animals get the “-hiki” gender, birds and rabbits get the “-wa” gender, large animals and collectible butterflies get the “-tō” counter, and such. But a huge difference is that the same noun can take different counters depending on the form it takes. Water could be “-teki” if counted in drops, “-pai/-hai” if counted in cups, or even “-rittoru” if counted in liters. Apples could be “-ko” if counted as wholes, “-kire” if counted as slices, “-hako” if counted in boxes or crates, etc. I feel like counters are like pronouns that refer to the form that the noun takes and/or is being counted in.
Wanna know the worst part, I realized I mistyped them, fixed them and then illustrator crashed... AND I FORGOT TO CHECK IF THE CHANGES HAD SAVED!!!! why me 😭.
@@TrueSchwar oh habibi, I'm so sorry! But that thing aside, I really loved your video, keeping making your content ^^ (Side note: I'll have this numeral feature in mind when I start learning Japanese heheh)
My comment keeps getting deleted, so here's another try @TrueSchwar the article "Altaicization and De-Altaicization of Japonic and Koreanic" has a Middle Chinese example: 白 羅 壹 段 紫 絁 壹 baek la ’jit twan ʦi si ’jit white silk one CLF purple silk one 緋紬 壹 段 色 物 三 事。 pji drjuw ’jit twan srik mjut sam ʣri silk one CLF color thing three CLF ‘One item of white silk gauze, one [item] of purple silk fabric, one item of bright red silk, three pieces of colored things.’ (ms. Stein 5804) For modern Chinese, I found the following examples. This account's name is 加班狗一只 or "over-time dog one-CLF". I.e. an overworked dog Another example: 老狗一只了 Old dog one-CLF PERF "It has become an old dog" In the title of the RUclips video: 大鱼一条接一条 Big fish one-CLF connect one-CLF Big fish one after another To show that this doesn't apply to only one-CLF, here's an example 家里猫两只 House-in cat two-CLF "Two cats in a house" The more default phrasing would be: 家里两只猫 House-in two-CLF cat So while not the default and definitely marked usage, noun followed by classifier is not unheard of and used quite commonly in modern Mandarin. Edit: there are also proverbs like 死路一条 unalive road one-CLF which means 'no way out'. This proverb is also relatively new, since it was first used by Deng Xiaoping in a regular sentence: 不改善人民生活，只能是死路一条。 If the lives of the people do not improve, the outcome will only be nad
What can be added is that when using the native counting words you don't need the class words, but you add つ _tsu_ at the end for all but 10, which receives nothing. つ filled the possesive role of の long time ago.
first 😎
Aw man, second to my own video.
"other shit" is a good addition to standard terminology
all that for the japanese to use english numerals like ワン、ツー、スリー when they read foreign movies and videogames names
Maybe this is reflective of the Japanese language’s ongoing evolution. In the same way that many Japanese began to use Chinese loan words and phrases over a thousand years ago, perhaps what is occurring today with English is the same. Maybe a couple centuries down the line we’d have kanji with not only Sino-Japanese and Native Japanese readings, but Anglo-Japanese readings as well.
Usage of the English numerals in Japanese is very, very limited. I don't see them much even in light novels.
@@riowhi7
> kanji with Anglo-Japanese readings
So like shounen manga special move names?
@@riowhi7 We already do that in manga or novels, but it's purely for poetic expression. I don't think it'll ever be common in formal writing.
@@riowhi7 Even though Japan is under US occupation (e.g., see the CIA fight against the movement to remove article 9 from the Japanese constitution and other WW2-related provisions), it's not the language of government, so it's unlikely.
Oh this is a good point to bring up regarding the “weirdness” of Japanese numbers. It should look foreign to English speakers. 白飯を二百グラムぐらい食べた… 今日はお客さんが店に百人以上来た… In English they have adverbial “a lot”, right? I kind of see it as a very restricted version of Japanese number adverbs, though I don’t know if that is accurate. Perhaps another way to look at it is that they behave similarly to “x times”, “for x hours” and the like. “林檎を三回食べた” (∅ ate apple three‐time) is structurally very similar to “林檎を三個食べた” (∅ ate apple three‐object). Also “部屋に三時間いた” (∅ was in room three‐hour; I stayed in the room for three hours) is similar to “部屋に三人いた” (∅ was in room three‐person; There were three people in the room).
I remembered it’s called 遊離数量詞 (floating quantifier) in the linguistics jargon.
If I could give you a hug right now I would! Thank you for this!
wow such great takes! btw I find it interesting that there's absolutely no difference between Japanese and Korean in this regard (that I can think of)
Thanks, I hope it made sense to you guys.
I thought it’s beneficial to clarify that in the last example “三人” (three‐person) by itself doesn’t “fill the subject slot” - it merely gives additional info on the number of the implied subject, which can be anything depending on the context. Here are some examples with an explicit subject :
警官が部屋に三時間いた。
cop was in room three‐hour
A cop stayed in the room for three hours.
警官が部屋に三人いた。
cop was in room three‐person
There were three cops in the room. (Other non‐cop people could be there too, not included in the count.)
Also it would be fun to have an example where the number adverb is super‐separated from the supposedly modified noun :
今日は客が昨日と違って店に百人以上来た。
as for today customer differently from yesterday came to shop hundred‐person‐or‐more
Today, unlike yesterday, more than a hundred customers came to the shop.
The examples I’ve given are all natural ways to say these things; they don’t sound particularly artificial to me as a native speaker.
I am by no means a proficient Japanese speaker but I always parsed a sentence like "ringo wa boku ga sanko tabeta" (excuse the romaji) as "with regards to apples, I ate three", which isn't that weird in English imo. I just figured it was one of those quirky phrasings that had become standard through some kind of politeness or social norms, kind of like all those "il y a" constructions in French. I don't know if that made any sense, but I appreciate you making me think about it.
As for other weird numeral stuff, Danish has some pretty strange number names for multiples of 10, not unlike French. Like "halvtreds" for 50, which comes from "halvtredje snes", halvtredje translating directly to "half third" but means "two and a half", and snes being a score. Then we also put the smaller number before the multiple of ten, so "fem og halvtreds" is 55, translating to "five and two-and-a-half scores". No one parses it that way though, most people don't think in scores. What is most weird to me though is that no other Germanic that I can think of language does anything remotely like this. All of the others just have some variation of "five tens and five".
Oh I've seen the danish one's before. That always threw me for a loop, and I loved telling people about it when they complained about French numerals.
If you want a more literal translation, it could be “concerning apples, I ate three wholes of them”, where “san-ko” contrasts with e.g. “san-kire” meaning “three slices”
Yeah and when i was looking for explanation down the comments of a video talking about danish number i found a dude that explained it why it was like that and how people think about it. I didn't find it difficult bc Albania has scores and like only 2 (nje zet and dy zet) scores and unlike french there's no 1×20+11 we just continue normal base 10 with 30 and 50 onward. So you just have to like learn word for 20 and for 40 and that's it, though there is a variation in sicily where some might use 3 and 4 score(tre zet katrë zet). So that does make it easier to learn french and danish numbers for me in a way, but I'm not learning french or danish, so i don't remember much.
Don't forget that in English before any "teens" we have "Eleven" and "Twelve", which is also not entirely straightforward.
Prince Ali has 75 golden camels. And purple peacocks, he's got 53.
4:22 This second sentence can actually be translated somewhat literally in English- given that は is a topic marker and not just subject marker, you could translate the sentence as:
"As for the apples, I ate three of them"
Where you can separate the noun and the number in a similar way (Just for perspective on how this can make sense)
To my ear that sounds like an antiquated way of speaking in english. It is correct, but would sound very odd to the ear. It makes me wonder if that was one of the shifts that occurred in English as it adopted more French practices.
@@ericnoriega547 Yes, it's not a natural way of speaking, but it's a more literal translation of what role は plays as a topic marker
I think part of the reason the reason the counters like 少し and たくさん are used that way are because of Japanese particles. As particles mark the noun with it’s purpose in the sentence, you can place the counter wherever, because you already know what is being counted.
In りんごは少し食べた for example, the latter part of the sentence says: ate a a little. What did you eat? Well, the は particle marks the topic so you probably ate the sentence’s topic aka the apples. The adverb could be moved and the sentence will still make sense: 少しはりんごを食べ; 食べたことは、少しりんご…
another commenter mentioned spanish ordinals, which are quite similar to what i'm describing here, but let me talk about portuguese ordinals. they aren't that weird morphologically: the only thing that may be weird to an english speaker is that all number words become ordinal - you don't say "twenty-first" but "twentieth-first" (vigésimo primeiro).
the problem though is that the words are *all* latinisms (at least for 10 and over). like, loaned from latin, and they don't exactly look like the normal numbers, they're formed irregularly from the perspective of a modern speaker.
'first' through 'tenth' are common, everyday words:
primeiro 'first'
segundo 'second'
terceiro 'third'
quarto 'fourth', quinto, sexto, sétimo, oitavo, nono, décimo. everyone knows and uses these.
eleventh is décimo primeiro 'tenth first', then décimo segundo for 12th, and so on, up to décimo nono, 19th. 20th is vigésimo, then vigésimo primeiro, vigésimo segundo..., until you get to 30th, trigésimo. up to trigésimo the words are common, and you can expect everyone to know those words and probably to use them.
40 onwards is more complicated though; fortieth is quadragésimo, then fiftieth is quinquagésimo. sexagésimo 60th, septuagésimo 70th, octagésimo 80th (pedants say octogésimo but -a- is far more common), nonagésimo 90th. with these numbers, the higher you go, the less common they become. everyone understands these words, but we don't really use them, we wouldn't really say that someone finished a race in "fifty-second" place with the ordinal quinquagésimo segundo, we'd just say, no lugar cinquenta e dois, on place 52.
100th is centésimo, and this is a common word because it's a fraction (it's also used for fractional seconds, cinco segundos e trinta e quatro centésimos '5.43 seconds'), and also because you can use it hyperbolically.
200th is ducentésimo. no one who isn't a massive nerd uses this word, and most people don't know it, although they will recognize what it means because of the morphology. 300th, 400th, and so on, are very, very rare. the forms sound ridiculous to any normal speakers (what the hell is septingentésimo 'seven hundredth', lmao).
1 000th is milésimo, 10⁶th is milionésimo. these are common words because they're used fractionally and hyperbolically.
It’s also interesting how fractions don’t quite match the ordinals, even though they clearly have the same origin. Except for small numbers (up to 3), a number’s inverse matches exactly its ordinal form if and only if it’s “simple”: so 1/20 is “um vigésimo”, and 1/9 is “um nono”. But when the ordinal is not “simple”, the inverse is just the cardinal form, followed by the suffix -avo, from “oitavo” (8th). So 1/14 isn’t “um décimo quarto”, but “um catorze avo”, and 1/36 isn’t “um trigésimo sexto”, but “um trinta e seis avo”.
I wonder if that could be extended to ordinals, making them regular again.
Cool video. I didn't know about this and will start noticing it now in Japanese. I just came across your channel: one suggestion I have for the video: Can you increase the volume? It is noticeably quieter than other videos I watch (like the History of Chinese letters)
2:08 Here you see "Sannin, gonin..." being translated as "3 people, 4 people..." which is incorrect 五人 is 5 people the correct would be 四人.
I was just thinking about why number+classifier in Japanese sentences sounds so intuitive for me (Thai native). But maybe it's just because number+classifier can be detached from noun in Thai, too. Maybe it's a feature that come from the pro-drop nature of Thai and Japanese
i noticed this while learning japanese, but i like it. when translating between japanese and english i find myself starting with “english” sentences like “new books, i want two volumes of them” or “today, with friends -five people-, soccer i will play”
I've asked a similar question on reddit about head grouping, someone there also suggested Japanese order modifies the verb
in english and arabic, the numbers between 10 and 20 have like their own system, in javanese this goes for numbers between 10 and 30, also there are som number with unique naming like 25 (selawe, means one lawe), 50 (seket, means one ket?), 60 (sewidak, menas one widak?) but ther is no two lawe, etc.
The noun modifies the counter.
In Japanese, you never have a modifier after the thing it modifies.
Thai has really close if not the same classifier and splitting by particles "quirks" as Japanese.
Counter are often separated from the noun by a filler word/auxillary/particle and rarely does the counter come before the noun.
However, Thai doesn't have a separation between adjective and adverb, so it is hard to say if counter is one or the other.
Additionally, in Thai, one has a special property. You can have either หนึ่งแผ่น /nueng˩.paen˩/ or แผ่นนึง /paen˩.nueng˧/; both meaning "one sheet".
Here, แผ่น /paen˩/ is a classifier, meaning sheet. Both หนึ่ง /nueng˩/ and นึง /nueng˧/ mean 1, but they are not interchangable.
Also, แผ่นหนึ่ง /paen˩.nueng˩/ is used with a different meaning, but นึงแผ่น /nueng˧.paen˩/ is not used.
In contrast, English has 2 numeral systems, cardinal and ordinal - which is "weird" for me.
Edit: typo
Russian allows you to put numerals before and after the noun, with a change in meaning.
Numeral + noun is standard, whereas noun + numeral adds the uncertainty.
"Ya potratil dollarov 20" = "I spent maybe around 20 dollars".
Counting in hundreds is strange in Polish - the first five go like this:
Sto (literally just"Hundred")
Dwieście ("Twohundreds", the hundred part is also pluralosed, but in an alternative way. It's especially odd, because it doesn't do this to thousands of any other place value.)
Czysta (Threehundreds" the hundred is pluralised again, but normally)
Czterysta (Fourhundreds" same story as 300)
Pięćset ("Fivehundred" a different word is used for hundred and it is no longer plural. This pattern says consistent for all the following hundreds.
Nice video, and it’s “طالب” btw
Yeah... illustrator crashed after I fixed that, and I was so focused on fixing the other lost stuff that I forgot to check if that...
really neat video. very insightful and well researched.
one thing I'd suggest to note is that your video is very quiet. you can see if you right click on this video and click "Stats for nerds" it says "(content loudness -14.9dB)". ideally it should be around 0, although a couple dB lower is fine. for perspective, -7.0dB is where it will already start sounding quiet.
turning up the volume to reach this point will make a more comfortable viewing experience for viewers, and prevent the issue where they turn up their volume very high to hear your video, and then getting blasted by very loud sound on the next average loudness video they watch.
a quick way to do this is by using "normalizing". most video editors have this feature, which is where your audio will automatically be turned up to this point for you.
just some feedback which might be helpful for your next upload. good luck, and keep up the good work
I think the best way to model the Japanese number system is, like you said, taking the "two glasses of water" structure to the extreme, where all nouns are uncountable and you need a unit to actually refer to what you're counting.
I think I've definitely tended towards thinking of counters in Japanese as adverbs (though part of that might be the influence of the late Cure Dolly). It's definitely not a thought you're alone in having!
The Japanese wikipedia page for counters also specifically lists the phrase 「3倍明るい」 ("three times brighter") which is a pretty compelling example for counters (at least sometimes) acting adverbially
I really couldn't tell you if the number is adverbial or not, I only study Japanese for speaking/reading. That is to say, I don't have a particular interest and/or expertise in linguistics. From my point of view this is purely a matter of convenience, if you are to recall the number of something, you can say something like 「犬が。。。。３匹いました。」 pausing to remember how many there were. When you separate the subject, or object from their particle, it just sounds kind of wrong. It may be a plebeian perspective but it feels right to me. My experience is limited to only 5 years of Japanese study every day, so I am only just a beginner though, I wish I could explain this better.
Your analysis is correct: The adverbial use of numbers is much more natural. You can even use the number-adverbs without the noun: At a rental car shop, you might say ニ台借りたいんですけど (I'd like to rent two) without saying "car" at all. You might suspect this "two" is a sort of pronoun but it's not. If it were a noun or a pronoun, you should be able to say 「二台があります(There are two)」「二台を借ります(I'll rent two)」, which are unnatural. Japanese is a verb centric language and everything else is optional as long as there is a verb. 「借ります(rent)」「車を借ります(rent a car)」「私が借ります(I rent)」「三時に借ります(rent at three o'clock)」「二台借ります(rent two)」 . . . all these are natural and correct sentences. That's why numbers-as-adverb are useful: When you don't need to say "car", you don't in Japanese; you just say "two" as an adverb.
Yippie new schwar video
Thai has 3 set of numbers that borrowed from Chinese, 1 borrowed from Pali/Sanskrit, and none of native origin.
3 Chinese base numerals are for
1. Counting everything
= 1(เอ็ด/et) 2(ยี่/yi, สอง/song) 3(สาม/sam) 4(สี่/si) 5(ห้า/ha) 6(หก/hok) 7(เจ็ด/jet) 8(แปด/paet) 9(เก้า/kao) 10(สิบ/sip)
2. Counting sons
= 1(อ้าย/ai) 2(ยี่/yi) 3(สาม/sam) 4(ไส/sai) 5(งั่ว/ngua) 6(ลก/lok) 7(เจ็ด/jet) 8(แปด/paet) 9(เจา/jao) 10(จง/jong) 11(นิง/ning) 12(สอง/song)
3. Counting daughters
= 1(เอื้อย/ueai) 2(อี่/i) 3(อ่าม/am) 4(ไอ่/ai) 5(อั้ว/ua) 6(อก/ok) 7(เอก/ek) 8(แอก/aek) 9(เอา/ao) 10(อัง/ang)
1 Pali/Sanskrit numeral
= 0(ศูนย์/sun) 1(เอก/ek) 2(ทวิ,โท/twi,to) 3(ติ,ตรี/ti,tri) 4(จตุ/jatu) 5(ปัญจ/panja) 6(ฉ/cha) 7(สัตต,สัปต/satta,sapta) 8(อัฏฐ/atta) 9(นว/nawa) 10(ทส/totsa)
I still don't get the point why it's weird. For things that can be commonly referred to in many possible quantities that warrants clarification like "two slices of apple", "paper thee sheets", "five piles of papers" when you are talking about physical quantities of paper needs quantifiers. Only when the exact quantity doesn't matter that you can omit the quantifier "I graded two papers" "I shared two interesting papers related to my study today"
To me a quantifier is always hinted but in European languages it can be omitted when ambiguity is low, but a hidden quantifier underlying the grammar is still there. Just in Eastern Asian languages the omission is less observed because we are more sensitive to the ambiguity.
We just can't stand the itch of think about what does it mean by "two apples", "two slices"? "two containers"? "two acres"? "two what"!? And have to give a unit for the whole fruit, just to relieve the ambiguity
@@play005517 counters aren’t weird, it’s the spitting of the numeral from the noun that’s weird.
It would be like if “I graded three papers last night can’t become “papers I graded thee” in English.
@@TrueSchwar Oh I see. It's like the situation
A: "I ate apples."
B: "How many?"
A: "Three."
where A may anticipate it and shorten the conversation to
A: "I ate apples. [realizes the obvious question and answers before B explicitly asking] Three. "
and this happens fairly frequently so it just becomes:
A: "I ate apples, three."
my speculation is when this post-noun clarification of counters happens more and more often (maybe because Japanese sentence structures to make it more predisposed to the delayed clarification?)
the separation of the counters and the noun becomes recognized and used more deliberated and naturally
or it can be viewed with the lens of complex case system, in some languages like Slavic you can technically rearrange around the words in a sentence and remains roughly the same meaning (with different emphasis) while still remain grammatically correct because every words more or less are changed to their correct case to distinguish their S O V role.
In Japanese, similar things happens with the particles and markers, you can freely move around many things and omit a lot of them as long as you mark them with correct particle. so under this system counters and nouns can be decoupled and moved around for expressive purpose as long as you mark them correctly.
It may be super terrible, but saying twenty die instead of twenty four sounds awesome.
Or I guess something like deaf would be closer, because it isn't exactly the same.
deaf?
@@TrueSchwar You said sounded like the word for die, so I chose a word that sounded like death.
@@I_Love_Learning OOOOOOOOOH!
@@I_Love_LearningIn fact the Sino Japanese readings for 4 and death are identical, as in Middle Chinese and many modern Chinese languages (including Mandarin), the only difference between the two words is the tone. As a result, when they were loaned into Japanese, they were rendered exactly the same (shi) due to Japanese having no tones to distinguish them
@@scurly0792 "Japanese doesn't have tones." and other hilarious lies you can tell yourself!
To be fair it is true that pitch-accent can't really affect し because it's only 1 mora but it doesn't mean Japanese doesn't have tones.
The nominal is detached from the noun but NOT from the verb. The nominal needs to stay close to the verb for it to be natural and easy to understand. The ending is way more important.
Yea, Japanese numbers are really weird both for having two number systems they use at the same time and because of the way the numbers are used.
Your last remark about how the way Japanese is classified as a 'Numeral-Noun' language points to something linguistics as a study makes. Linguistics is so focused categorizing it tends to overlook the variability within languages. In English there are two ways to make plurals: adding S to the end of words, or fronting the vowel in a word (like in 'mouse' to 'mice'). And you have words like 'moose' where it has three ways people make it into a plural: 'mooses', 'meese', and 'moose'. What is the proper way to make it into a plural. My argument is there is no proper way and it's all just different forms of the same word. So that's my argument for Japanese, it can be two types at the same time. (I hope this made sense)
Yeah when studying latin I just got used to it. Old Tupi, a native language of Pindoretama (brasil) just lets u place the number both after and before a noun.
"Apŷaba mosapyr asepîak" / "Mosapyr apŷaba asepîak" --> I see three men (Mosapyr is 3)
Do you know if it can separate from the noun in anyway?
@@TrueSchwar hmmm maybe if you use the number as a noun? Like "Apŷaba xeremipotara Peroretame mosapyramo oîkó." --> The three men that a like in Portugal. Literally: the men that I like in Portugal are three-ly"
the clean presentation drsign has latex bamer vibes
@@markuslanggeng would it be shocking if I said I don’t use Latex?
@@TrueSchwar omg, you're really using Latex? honestly I'm a bit shocked to see Latex user in the wild haha. Would you mind share the template? I'm trying to learn to make a better beamer presentation myself and yours is super simple but still pleasant to look at
@@markuslanggeng Oh. uh..., I actually meant I don't use LaTeX... all my slides are prepared in adobe Illustrator and assembled in Premier (borrowing my mother's subscription like the broke ass college student I am).
My good friend has been trying to convert me for years now, but I've always struggled with it so never made the leap from Word/Pages (yes I use pages).
I wanna say, it's really nothing wrong with "僕は林檎三個を食べた。". It's rather common.
Even "を" is omittable like "僕は林檎三個食べた。". In this case it sounds a bit casual.
a lot of this may be connected to how Japanese tends to form Topic-Comment sentences, instead of SOV sentences
1:03 as a native thai speaker i say 3 water glasses
@@Diskoe you place the number before the noun and counter after? That’s fascinating
@@TrueSchwarno not that i mean say it in english i would say แก้วน้ำ 3 อัน in thai
@@Diskoe ah! Got it.
Though now I wonder if any languages do separate the number and counter… gotta look into that.
French speaker (from France) here. The way we use numbers is normal, but the numbers themselves are *very* weird.
60 = soixante (sixty), pretty close to italian/spanish
70 = soixante-dix (sixty-ten), pretty not close to italian/spanish
80 = quatre-vingts (four-twenties), what ?
90 = quatre-vingts-dix (four-twenties and ten), good luck
I would like to twoly order glasses of water, please
Since the word orders are different from Chinese, Japanese had to resort to some creative mechanisms. は is something akin to "with respect to"--seems to me.
Can happen in English.... "Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three" - Monty Python.
Spanish has an ordinal system that even native natives struggle with
Oh?
Eh, I don’t see it as it being that bad but, it is different from the “normal” system. Counting is done in the same way just with different words.
For example, Mexico’s current legislature is the 66th, so it’s referred to as: Sexagésima Sexta. In normal numbers it’d be Sesenta y Seis. They both mean the same: Six Tens and Six, they just use different words.
this is because the higher ordinals in spanish are all latin loans, not really a natural part of the language but an artificial insertion by nerds who thought an ordinal for the number 300 was really necessary
portuguese does the exact same thing - i wrote a longer comment about it under this same video
the volume is too low
Is it just me, or it feels like number are attached to verb instead of the noun?
Like it is "Apple" Three pieces, Ate. / "Apple" Three times, Ate.
I talked to GPT, and it agreed with me, but it isn't a very good source.
on other hand, maybe I'm wrong.
In Russian, sentence is more or less just a jumble of worlds, without any regard to where, they are.
Generally, it will warp accent, any there is "Generally used" way of ordering words.
what's your font
Alegreya, Alegreya Sans, Kaiti TC, Yukyukasho are the fonts I used I’m pretty sure
Three male crosses vs three female crosses
this is very quiet. even with my phones speakers at full volume I have to focus really hard and still don't understand everything 😢
I consider the counters like pronouns, but they only link a number to the thing it’s counting.
They’re like a gender system in a way: medium to small animals get the “-hiki” gender, birds and rabbits get the “-wa” gender, large animals and collectible butterflies get the “-tō” counter, and such.
But a huge difference is that the same noun can take different counters depending on the form it takes. Water could be “-teki” if counted in drops, “-pai/-hai” if counted in cups, or even “-rittoru” if counted in liters. Apples could be “-ko” if counted as wholes, “-kire” if counted as slices, “-hako” if counted in boxes or crates, etc.
I feel like counters are like pronouns that refer to the form that the noun takes and/or is being counted in.
Why is the video so quiet
hi :3
(im yusuketh443 but i cant use my phone now so im gonna say hi using my another phone instead)
@@Diskoe hello :3
@@TrueSchwar😀😀😀
As someone who speaks Arabic, I can't help cringing to "talibat" and "tullab" getting mispelled 😫😫😫😫😫
Wanna know the worst part, I realized I mistyped them, fixed them and then illustrator crashed...
AND I FORGOT TO CHECK IF THE CHANGES HAD SAVED!!!!
why me 😭.
@@TrueSchwar oh habibi, I'm so sorry! But that thing aside, I really loved your video, keeping making your content ^^
(Side note: I'll have this numeral feature in mind when I start learning Japanese heheh)
69th video, nice
Could you pleaſe turn down þe volume? Your voice is ſo loud my ears are in pain.
I’ll see what I can do
you can turn the video volume down
For me it's the opposite. It's too quiet.
no YOU turn down the volume
My comment keeps getting deleted, so here's another try
@TrueSchwar the article "Altaicization and De-Altaicization of Japonic and Koreanic" has a Middle Chinese example:
白 羅 壹 段 紫 絁 壹
baek la ’jit twan ʦi si ’jit
white silk one CLF purple silk one
緋紬 壹 段 色 物 三 事。
pji drjuw ’jit twan srik mjut
sam
ʣri
silk one CLF color thing three CLF
‘One item of white silk gauze, one [item] of purple silk fabric, one item of
bright red silk, three pieces of colored things.’ (ms. Stein 5804)
For modern Chinese, I found the following examples.
This account's name is 加班狗一只 or "over-time dog one-CLF". I.e. an overworked dog
Another example:
老狗一只了
Old dog one-CLF PERF
"It has become an old dog"
In the title of the RUclips video:
大鱼一条接一条
Big fish one-CLF connect one-CLF
Big fish one after another
To show that this doesn't apply to only one-CLF, here's an example
家里猫两只
House-in cat two-CLF
"Two cats in a house"
The more default phrasing would be:
家里两只猫
House-in two-CLF cat
So while not the default and definitely marked usage, noun followed by classifier is not unheard of and used quite commonly in modern Mandarin.
Edit: there are also proverbs like 死路一条 unalive road one-CLF which means 'no way out'. This proverb is also relatively new, since it was first used by Deng Xiaoping in a regular sentence:
不改善人民生活，只能是死路一条。
If the lives of the people do not improve, the outcome will only be nad
What can be added is that when using the native counting words you don't need the class words, but you add つ _tsu_ at the end for all but 10, which receives nothing.
つ filled the possesive role of の long time ago.