すうじ (Numbers) 5
Original Posting: October 12, 2008
Now we can count from 1-20, 20-100, 100-1000 & 1000-10,000. This post will cover the 10-thousands.
I mentioned before that in Japanese there’s a separate unit for Ten-Thousands. It took me a bit to wrap my head around it. Say we have a huge number like 98,765.
In English, we’d read it 98 thousand, 7 hundred, 60, 5.
In Japanese it’s essentially read like this: 9 Ten-Thousand, 8 Thousand, 7 Hundred, 60, 5.
To me, it’s really hard to think that there’s something else to put in there. It almost makes sense, because Japanese currency ￥ (Yen, or えん [en] in Japanese) is usually listed in much larger numbers than we’re used to with dollars.
￥100 is about $1.00 give or take.
If our big number above was ￥98,765… it’d be $987.65 roughly.
1,000. sen せん 10,000. ichiman* いちまん 20,000. niman にまん 30,000. sanman さんまん 40,000. yonman~ よんまん 50,000. goman ごまん 60,000. rokuman ろくまん 70,000. nanaman~ ななまん 80,000. hachiman はちまん 90,000. kyuuman きゅうまん Using this new list, lets look at the big number again, & break it down:
90,000 kyuuman 8,000 hassen 700 nanahyaku 60 rokujuu 5 go
So all together 98,765 would be read:
きゅうまん はっせん ななひゃく ろくじゅう ご
kyuuman hassen nanahyaku rokujuu go
It’s alot to take in, but I found for myself that breaking it down helps.
