Languages Archives - José Carlos Bonilla

Japanese desu – The Japanese copula

José Carlos Bonilla — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 00:21:19 +0000

Basics

The verb です (desu) is the Japanese word for “to be”:

あれは犬です
あれは　いぬです
That is a dog.

私は田中です
わたしは　たなかです
I am Tanaka.

モチは私のお気に入りです
モチは　わたしの　おきにいりです
Mochi is my favorite.

Like all Japanese verbs, です (desu) is placed at the end of the clause it belongs to. If the sentence with です (desu) is made up of a single clause, then です (desu) goes at the end of the sentence.

The plain form of です (desu) is だ (da). This is the form used in informal speech:

あれは犬だ
あれは　いぬだ
That is a dog.

私は田中だ
わたしは　たなかだ
I am Tanaka.

モチは私のお気に入りだ
モチは　わたしの　おきにいりだ
Mochi is my favorite.

Outside of changing the politeness of the sentence, using だ (da) instead of です (desu) does not change the meaning of the sentence.

The verb です (desu) is also called “the copula.” This is because, like in many other languages, the verb “to be” couples two elements together by creating an equals relationship between the two. In English, “to be” (along with other verbs) is called a “linking verb” because it links two elements together.

Let’s look at an example that clearly illustrates this linking effect:

私は人間です
わたしは　にんげんです
I am human.

In the above example, we can see in both Japanese and English how the verb “to be” links two elements (a pronoun and a noun) into an equality relationship:

私＝人間
わたし＝にんげん
I = human

This linking or coupling effect is the reason why です (desu) is called “the Japanese copula.”

Complex sentences

The copula です (desu) can of course be used in sentences with more than one clause (complex sentences).

Let’s look at some examples:

それを言ったのは山田です
それを　いったのは　やまだです
The one who said that is Yamada. / Yamada is the one who said that.

私が買ったのはリンゴだ
わたしが　かったのは　リンゴだ
What I bought were apples. / Apples are what I bought.

それに気づいたのは彼女だ
それに　きづいたのは　かのじょだ
The one who noticed that is her. / She is the one who noticed that.

In all the above examples, we have the following pattern:

[clause]のは[noun/pronoun]です/だ

When placed after a clause (i.e., after a verb), the particle の (no) turns the preceding clause into a noun phrase. Since such a clause now works like a noun, adding the particle は (wa) after it turns it into the topic of the sentence.

In our example sentences, the addition of のは (no wa) after the clauses at the start of the sentence creates the following phrases:

それを言ったのは
それを　いったのは　
The one who said that

私が買ったのは
わたしが　かったのは
What I bought

それに気づいたのは
それに　きづいたのは
The one who noticed that

Since we now have noun clauses marked by the topic particle は (wa), these clauses can now be used with the copula です (desu) to link them to other elements.

In the first example, we link the clause with 山田 (Yamada), a proper noun:

それを言ったのは山田です
それを　いったのは　やまだです
The one who said that is Yamada. / Yamada is the one who said that.

In the second example, we link the clause with リンゴ (ringo), a common noun:

私が買ったのはリンゴだ
わたしが　かったのは　リンゴだ
What I bought were apples. / Apples are what I bought.

Finally, in the third example, we link the clause to 彼女 (kanojo), a personal pronoun:

それに気づいたのは彼女だ
それに　きづいたのは　かのじょだ
The one who noticed that is her. / She is the one who noticed that.

As we can see, the pattern

[clause]のは[noun/pronoun]です/だ

is very common and very useful in Japanese, so it’s great to learn it from an early stage.

Advanced topic – The copula in relative clauses

Let’s look at the following English sentences:

My teacher Tanaka is very strict.

I, the boss, will choose.

You, who are the hero of legend, shall save the kingdom.

In all the above sentences, the copula appears in a clause that is not the main one. In the first and second sentences, the copula doesn’t appear explicitly, but it is present implicitly.

Let’s look at the sentences again, but with the implied copula made explicit in the first two:

My teacher, (who is) Tanaka, is very strict.

I, (who am) the boss, will choose.

You, who are the hero of legend, shall save the kingdom.

In order to render these sentences into Japanese, we’ll need to use the copula in a relative clause, rather than in the main clause. To do that, we’ll need to use a different form of the copula.

The form です (desu) of the copula is actually a shorthand of a another form of the copula.

That other form looks like this:

である (de aru)

Yes, that ある (aru) is the verb of existence ある (aru).

This form of the copula explains why the negative of the copula is ではありません (de wa arimasen) or ではない (de wa nai): these negative forms simply negate あります (arimasu) or ある (aru) and add は (wa) for emphasis.

Let’s look at our example sentences and isolate the relative clauses that contain the copula, along with the noun that the relative clauses modify:

My teacher, (who is) Tanaka

I, (who am) the boss

You, who are the hero of legend

To express these relative clauses in Japanese, we employ である (de aru) as follows:

My teacher, (who is) Tanaka
私の先生である田中
わたしの　せんせいである　たなか

I, (who am) the boss
ボスである私
ボスである　わたし

You, who are the hero of legend
伝説の勇者である貴方
でんせつの　ゆうしゃである　あなた

Now that we’ve created these noun phrases with relative clauses, we can treat them as any noun. We can place は (wa) after them to make them into the topic of the sentence and finally add the predicate:

My teacher, (who is) Tanaka, is very strict.
私の先生である田中はとても厳しい
わたしの　せんせいである　たなかは　とても　きびしい

I, (who am) the boss, will choose.
ボスである私は選ぶ
ボスである　わたしは　えらぶ

You, who are the hero of legend, shall save the kingdom.
伝説の勇者である貴方は王国を救います
でんせつの　ゆうしゃである　あなたは　おうこくを　すくいます

Thus, the である (de aru) form of です (desu) allows employing the Japanese copula in relative clauses.

By the way, since the ある (aru) in である (de aru) is the existence verb, that means that ござる (gozaru) /ございます (gozaimasu), the super-polite form of ある (aru), can be used in the copula as well.

This is commonly done in fiction, especially with characters that are meant to evoke a very old-fashioned Japanese-ness. A notable example of such a character is Shishigami Bang from the BlazBlue series, who always uses でござる (de gozaru) for his copulas.

Bang might say things like:

そうでござる！ (instead of そうです)

結構でござる！
けっこうでござる！ (instead of けっこうです)

面白いでござる！
おもしろいでござる！ (instead of おもしろいです)

This way of speaking sounds exaggerated even to native Japanese speakers, and is meant to characterize Shishigami Bang as eccentric, funny, and extremely old-fashioned.

Conclusion

The Japanese copula です (desu) is the fundamental building block of Japanese sentences. It can be used to create the most basic sentences as well as complex ones.

The copula has various forms that are used for different purposes, including uses in fiction, where it can be used to give a particular flavor to a story’s characters.

The post Japanese desu – The Japanese copula appeared first on José Carlos Bonilla.

Japanese Numbers: from 0 to 10 and 1 trillion

José Carlos Bonilla — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 20:20:23 +0000

Japanese numbers are a bit complicated. Learning numbers in any language (even one’s mother tongue) is always somewhat difficult, but learning Japanese numbers in particular has some extra complexities.

For starters:

Did you know the number 100,000 is called “ten ten thousand” in Japanese?

Did you know that “1 million” is called “1 hundred ten thousand” in Japanese?

These and other fundamental differences in how Japanese conceives numbers add to the already difficult task of learning numbers in a foreign language.

But don’t fret! In this article, I will give you a detailed introduction to how Japanese numbers work.

After reading this article, you will not only know how to read Japanese numbers, but you will also start thinking about numbers the way the Japanese language does.

This will allow you to translate between an English mentality and a Japanese one.

But before we get into any theory, let me give you the names of Japanese numbers 0–10.

We’ll talk about them later in more depth, but I want to give you their names up front so you can start to get a feel for Japanese numbers:

0 = rei

1 = ichi

2 = ni

3 = san

4 = yon/shi

5 = go

6 = roku

7 = nana/shichi

8 = hachi

9 = ku/kyū

10 = jū

To understand the names of all other Japanese numbers, though, we need to get into a bit of theory. We won’t get into any arithmetic (sum, difference, multiplication, division), so don’t worry if you hate math!

We will start with some basic mathematics concepts, but I promise they won’t be too difficult. Plus we’ll discuss Japanese numbers all the way to 1 trillion, so it’ll all be worth it.

So let’s get to it! To learn how Japanese numbers work, we first need to talk a little about the number 10.

Note: If you’re just beginning to learn Japanese and are looking for a guide on getting started, check out my list of 5 resources for learning Japanese.

Powers of 10

The number ten is very important to humans. Since most humans have ten fingers, the number ten is a pretty natural benchmark for counting. Notice how we have ten digits:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

If you count from 0 to 9, you only need a single digit to represent all the numbers in the sequence. But what happens when you need to write the number ten?

We run out of single digits, so we add a new second digit to the left, make that digit 1 and reset the first digit to 0. After that, the numbers 11 through 19 simply change one digit (the first digit):

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

And what happens when we get to twenty?

We run out of digits again for the first digit, so we increase the second digit to 2 and again reset the first digit to 0. This pattern continues all the way to 99:

0 .. 9

10 .. 19

20 .. 29

30 .. 39

40 .. 49

50 .. 59

60 .. 69

70 .. 79

80 .. 89

90 .. 99

What happens when we get to one hundred?

100

We run out of digits for both digits, so we add a new third digit to the left, set that digit to 1 and reset the others to 0.

Then we can express all numbers from 101 to 999, until we get to one thousand, where we have to add yet another digit: 1,000.

With that, we can get all the way to 9,999 and then, for the number ten thousand, we again add another digit: 10,000.

This pattern of adding a new digit to the left set to 1 and resetting the rest to 0 continues to infinity.

These numbers made up of a 1 followed by any number of 0s are special to humans. These numbers are called powers of 10.

10 = ten

100 = one hundred

1,000 = one thousand

10,000 = ten thousand

100,000 = one hundred thousand

1,000,000 = one million

10,000,000 = ten million

100,000,000 = one hundred million

1,000,000,000 = one billion

…

Notice the English names for these numbers.

English has unique names for the numbers 10 (ten), 100 (hundred) and 1,000 (thousand), but, starting with 10,000, English starts combining the names of previous powers of 10 to make new names: ten thousand.

This continues with 100,000 (hundred thousand), and then—for 1,000,000—English adds a new unique name: million.

Then English again combines previous names for the next powers of 10 (ten million and hundred million) until the next unique name comes up, which is “billion” for 1,000,000,000.

Japanese numbers work similarly to English numbers in that they are based on powers of 10 and follow a very regular pattern.

However, there is one seemingly small difference that makes everything complicated.

Japanese desu – The Japanese copula

The verb です (desu) is the Japanese word for “to be.” Like all Japanese verbs, です (desu) is placed at the end of the clause it belongs to. If the sentence with です (desu) is made up of a single clause, then です (desu) goes at the end of the sentence.

Oh, Man (10,000)

We saw that English has unique names for the powers of 10 that have one zero (ten), two zeros (hundred), and three zeros (thousand).

Starting with 10,000 (ten thousand), however, English starts combining the names of previous powers of 10 to make new ones.

But, why stop giving unique names after just three zeros? Is there any special reason for that? Well, Japanese doesn’t seem to think so.

Japanese Numbers from 0 to 10

First, let’s name the ten Japanese digits.

Japanese actually has two names for certain numbers: a Japanese name and a Chinese name.

The Japanese names are usually only used with really small quantities or in very specific contexts, so we won’t discuss them in this article.

In this article, we’ll mostly focus on the Chinese name (and on a few exceptions where the Japanese name is used) since these are the names used for all numbers all the way to infinity.

The names for the ten Japanese digits are:

0 = rei*

1 = ichi

2 = ni

3 = san

4 = yon*/shi

5 = go

6 = roku

7 = nana*/shichi

8 = hachi

9 = ku/kyū

*These are Japanese names, but are commonly used.

After the ten digits, we have our first power of 10:

10 = jū

Apart from how to read the number 10 (jū), you should also know the kanji for it, which is 十.

Don’t get scared by the kanji! I’ll only use the kanji for powers of 10 because they’re important and commonly used in the real world.

The Japanese Number Naming Pattern

From 11 to 19, the names of Japanese numbers follow a regular pattern made up of jū followed by the name of the the first digit:

11 = jūichi

12 = jūni

13 = jūsan

14 = jūyon

15 = jūgo

16 = jūroku

17 = jūnana

18 = jūhachi

19 = jūkyū

So the numbers from 11 to 19 are literally called: “ten-one,” “ten-two,” “ten-three,” “ten-four,” and so on.

For 20, we simply add the name for 2 (ni) in front of the name for 10 (jū) to get nijū. So, in Japanese, 20 is literally called “two-ten”. After that, the numbers 21 through 29 simply combine nijū with the name of the first digit:

21 = nijūichi

22 = nijūni

23 = nijūsan

24 = nijūyon

…

29 = nijūkyū

It’s a pretty regular pattern, right?

As you might have guessed, 30 is called sanjū (literally “three-ten”), and 31 is sanjūichi, 32 is sanjūni, 33 is sanjūsan, and so on and so forth. This naming pattern continues until 99, which is kyūjūkyū (literally, “nine-ten-nine”).

The number 100 is called hyaku and its kanji is 百.

After 100, the same pattern for numbers 0…99 is repeated just with hyaku in front:

101 (hyakuichi),

102 (hyakuni),

110 (hyakujū),

112 (hyakujūni),

120 (hyakunijū),

121 (hyakunijūichi),

130 (hyakusanjū),

and so on.

For 200, we simply add ni in front of hyaku: nihyaku, so 200 is literally called “two-hundred;” 300 is sanbyaku (the “h” sound in hyaku changes to a “b” sound after san). We this patter, we can name all numbers up to 999, which is kyūhyakukyūjūkyū (literally, “nine-hundred-nine-ten-nine”).

The number 1,000 is called sen and its kanji is 千.

After 1,000, the same pattern holds but now sen is placed in front:

1001 (senichi),

1002 (senni),

1011 (senjūichi),

1012 (senjūni),

1101 (senhyakuichi),

1111 (senhyakujūichi),

1212 (sennihyakujūni),

2321 (nisensanbyakunijūichi),

3958 (sansenkyūhyakugojūhachi),

and so on until 9,999 (kyūsenkyūhyakukyūjūkyū).

Ten Thousand Breaks the Mold

The number 10,000 is where things get really interesting in Japanese.

As we know, in English, the number 10,000 is named combining the names of previous powers of 10: “ten thousand.”

Therefore, coming from an English mentality, you might expect that 10,000 would be called something like “jūsen.”

However, that’s actually not the case in Japanese. In Japanese, the number 10,000 has a unique name, just like jū 十, hyaku 百, and sen 千.

The number 10,000 is called man in Japanese and its kanji is 万.

This may not initially seem like much of a break from the English pattern, but, in reality, the fact that 10,000 has a unique name in Japanese makes the way Japanese thinks about numbers significantly different from English.

Ten Thousand Is One Man

Let’s look again at the English powers of 10 up to 1 million:

10 = ten

100 = one hundred

1,000 = one thousand

10,000 = ten thousand

100,000 = one hundred thousand

1,000,000 = one million

In English, the powers of 10 have unique names for one zero (ten) up to three zeros (thousand) before repeating previous names.

In Japanese, the powers of 10 up to 10,000 are the following:

10 = jū

100 = hyaku

1,000 = sen

10,000 = man

What would 100,000 be called in Japanese? Well, after man, Japanese does like English and starts combining previous names of powers of 10 to make new names.

Let’s take a closer look at the English pattern for combining previous names of powers of 10.

In English, when we start repeating names with 10,000, we take the name for 10 (ten) and put it in front of the last unique name we used (thousand) to form “ten thousand.”

Japanese works in a similar way. To form the name for 100,000 in Japanese, we take the name for 10 (jū) and place it in front of the last unique name we used (man).

This gives us:

100,000 = jūman

That’s right. The Japanese name for 100,000 translates to “ten ten thousand” in English.

When first starting to learn numbers in Japanese, this is terribly uncanny. We are used to calling 100,000 as “one hundred thousand” in English, but calling this number “hyakusen” would be incorrect in Japanese.

One way of wrapping your mind around this is to not think of 10,000 as “ten thousand,” but rather as “one man.”

With this little mental trick, we can adapt the English naming pattern for numbers to fit into the Japanese one:

10 = ten

100 = one hundred

1,000 = one thousand

10,000 = one man

100,000 = ten man

It’s still a bit uncanny, but this adaptation makes the Japanese name for 100,000 a little bit easier to understand from an English mentality.

For something we take so for granted as numbers, getting used to this way of thinking about them takes a lot of time, practice, and patience, but it’s definitely achievable. Just take it very slowly at first and never rush.

You can reread what we’ve discussed so far as much as you want before continuing.

One Million in Japanese

Now that we’ve established how Japanese uses man, what would 1,000,000 be in Japanese?

We started repeating the names of powers of 10 with 100,000 and, for that number, we used the name for 10 (jū) followed by man.

That means that, for 1,000,000, we would have to use the name for 100 (hyaku) instead of jū and follow it by man:

1,000,000 = hyakuman

This means the Japanese name for 1,000,000 translates to “one hundred ten thousand” in English. You can also think of it as “one hundred man.”

The next power of 10 would be 10,000,000. Following the pattern, we would now have to use the name for 1,000 (sen), followed by man.

This gives us:

10,000,000 = senman

This means the Japanese name for 10,000,000 translates to “one thousand ten thousand” in English. You can also think of it as “one thousand man.”

The next power of 10 would be 100,000,000.

What happens then?

In English, after we’ve repeated the names “ten” and “hundred,” we don’t use “thousand” for 1,000,000 (we don’t call this number “one thousand thousand”) and instead introduce a new unique name: million.

Japanese works similarly.

After repeating jū, hyaku, and sen, we don’t not use man for 100,000,000 (we don’t call this number “manman”) and instead introduce a new name: oku, whose kanji is 億.

Thus:

100,000,000 = oku

This means that, similarly to how we can think of 10,000 as “one man,” we can think of 100,000,000 as “one oku.”

How’s everything so far?

Japanese numbers feel pretty uncanny at first, right? But at the same time it’s pretty similar to the English naming pattern.

If you can just manage to get used to using man, everything else will start to fall into place.

Let’s summarize the Japanese names of all the powers of 10 discussed so far before moving on to the next powers of 10:

10 = jū

100 = hyaku

1,000 = sen

10,000 = man

100,000 = jūman

1,000,000 = hyakuman

10,000,000 = senman

100,000,000 = oku

Seeing the powers of 10 this way makes the pattern clearer. It takes practice (and patience), but you’ll eventually get used to thinking about numbers the Japanese way.

The Road to 1 Trillion in Japanese

The next power of 10 is 1,000,000,000.

In English, this number has already exhausted the names “ten” and “hundred” (because it’s the power of 10 that comes after “one hundred million”), and is thus given a new unique name: billion.

In Japanese, however, when we reach 1,000,000,000, we’ve only just introduced the unique name oku in the previous power of 10.

This means that we have no need for yet another unique name for this number: we simply use the name for 10 (jū) followed by oku:

1,000,000,000 = jūoku

This means the Japanese name for 1,000,000,000 translates to “ten one hundred million” in English. You can also think of it as “ten oku.”

Can you guess the names of the next Japanese powers of 10?

10,000,000,000 = hyakuoku

100,000,000,000 = senoku

These names simply follow the pattern of using hyaku and sen in front of oku, respectively.

After that, Japanese adds another unique name for the next power of 10. The new name is chō and its kanji is 兆:

1,000,000,000,000 = chō

At first, it may seem a bit like overkill to learn how to express numbers up to 1 trillion in Japanese.

However, as we’ll see in the next section, what might look to us like really high numbers are actually quite commonplace in Japanese.

The next section presents some real-life examples of Japanese numbers (especially really large Japanese numbers).

If you want to review the theory we’ve discussed so far before moving on, feel free to do so as many times as you wish.

Again, it’ll take time, practice, and patience to get used to Japanese numbers, so don’t ever feel a need to rush through the process.

The Yen and Japanese Instagram Followers

The Yen

Let’s talk about the Japanese yen.

The yen (¥) is the Japanese currency. While the value of any given currency fluctuates wildly every day (and the pandemic has significantly changed currency dynamics), for many years the value of 1 yen has been rounded to approximately 0.01 US dollars.

¥1 ~ US $0.01

This conversion has changed with the pandemic, but it’s still a useful (very) rough estimate, so we’ll use it for our examples.

Under this conversion, 1 yen is roughly equal to 1 cent of a US dollar. A nice trick to convert dollars into yen with this rough conversion is to add two 0s to the right of the US dollar amount.

With this (very) rough conversion between the two currencies, let’s try to find yen approximations to some US dollar amounts. Let’s start with $100.

$100 ~ ¥10,000

So 100 dollars is approximately 10,000 yen. In Japanese, this amount would be called either man 万 or ichiman 1万 (literally “one man“).

How about $10,000?

$10,000 ~ ¥1,000,000

Look at that! We already made it to 1 million yen (called either hyakuman 百万 or ippyakuman 1百万 in Japanese)!

How about $1 million?

$1,000,000 ~ ¥100,000,000 (ichioku 1億)

So we need to use oku 億 just to express an amount of yen equivalent to US $1 million or greater.

During the height of the COVID pandemic, President Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan, which distributed $1.9 trillion in aid to Americans.

Don’t worry, we’re not even going to try to convert that into yen. However, we can try to translate that amount of dollars into Japanese:

1,900,000,000,000 = icchōkyūsenoku 1兆9千億

From our discussion in the previous section, we know one trillion is chō 兆 in Japanese and that one hundred billion is senoku 千億, so 1.9 trillion must be 1 chō 9 senoku or 1兆9千億.

These examples should demonstrate that knowing Japanese numbers up to 1 trillion isn’t some academic exercise.

Japanese handles really big numbers on a daily basis, especially because of the significant difference in value between the yen and the dollar.

Thinking about buying an iPhone?

You can expect to pay over ¥100,000 for one of the latest models.

Let’s now look at how Instagram followers are expressed in Japanese numbers.

This exercise will further show the usefulness of understanding big numbers in Japanese and of learning the kanji for Japanese powers of 10.

Japanese Instagram Follower Count

Remember that I showed you the kanji for various powers of 10 and that I mentioned they’re used in the real world?

Well, one place they’re commonly used is in displaying Instagram follower counts.

Let’s look at a few real-world examples of how Instagram follower counts are displayed in Japanese. But first, I’ll sum up the kanji we’ve studied in this article for various powers of 10:

10 = jū 十

100 = hyaku 百

1,000 = sen 千

10,000 = man 万

100,000,000 = oku 億

1,000,000,000,000 = chō 兆

Let’s look at our first Instragram follower count example:

The second column is the one indicating someone’s follower (フォロワー) count.

As we can see, Person 1 has 208.7万 followers. How many followers would that be in English?

Since this number is expressed in 万 (man), we know that the digit located just to the left of the decimal point (the 8) must be the one that corresponds to the 万 power of 10.

In other words, the 8 just to the left of the decimal point must be located where the 1 in 10,000 is located, that is, the fifth place. With that clue, we can expand the number like so:

2087000

And if we add commas every three digits, we get:

2,087,000

To produce this expansion, we removed the 万, moved the decimal point four places to the right (so the 8 will now be located in the fifth place) and added zeros to fill the places to the right of the 7.

With this expanded number, we see that 208.7万 translates as “2 million 87 thousand,” so Person 1 has over 2 million Instagram followers.

In case you’re wondering, in Japanese, the number 2,087,000 is read nihyakuhachimannanasen or 2百8万7千.

See how useful those kanji for powers of 10 are?

And if you’re wondering how to read 208.7万, it would be nihyakuhattennanaman (literally, “two hundred eight point seven ten thousand”). The decimal point is read ten in Japanese.

Whew, that was a bit of a mental workout, wasn’t it?

Not only did we have to think about a number expressed in 万, but we also added the complexity of the decimal point, which we hadn’t discussed until now.

Let’s look at another example:

With this user, we’ve gone up one power of 10 compared to the previous example. Person 2 has 1,189万 Instagram followers.

First, let’s expand that number, as we did for the previous example.

This time, there is no visible decimal point, so the point must be located in the rightmost spot of the entire number, that is, right after the 9. This means that the 9 must be in the fifth place:

11890000

If we add the commas, we get:

11,890,000

So 1,189万 translates in English to “11 million 890 thousand,” which means Person 2 has over 11 million Instagram followers.

In Japanese, the number 11,890,000 is read issenippyakuhachijūkyūman or 1千1百8十9万.

Since the number 1,189万 doesn’t have a visible decimal point, it is read exactly the same as 11,890,000.

Did that second example help make things clearer? I have one more example, but, don’t worry, this one is really simple.

This extremely famous user has 3億 Instagram followers. We already know that 億 means 100,000,000, so Person 3 has over 300,000,000 Instagram followers.

I hope these Instagram follower examples have demonstrated how useful and important the kanji for powers of 10 are for understanding Japanese numbers.

They also should serve to further demonstrate that learning how to express big Japanese numbers is an important skill for everyday Japanese.

Conclusion

Understanding Japanese numbers is complicated when starting out from an English mindset.

Not only does one have to learn the names of the numbers, but one must also learn how to think about numbers the way Japanese does, which is different from the English way.

However, with a solid understanding of the powers of 10, getting used to using man 万 is possible with time and practice.

Once you manage to start thinking in terms of Japanese powers of 10 such as man 万 (10,000), sen 千 (1,000), hyaku 百 (100), and jū 十 (10), the rest will fall into place much more easily.

Before you go!

If you enjoyed this post and would like to show your appreciation, you can support me on Ko-fi!

Any donation will be greatly appreciated and will help me keep creating more awesome content like this.

The post Japanese Numbers: from 0 to 10 and 1 trillion appeared first on José Carlos Bonilla.

5 Resources for Learning Japanese

José Carlos Bonilla — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 19:38:18 +0000

So you want to learn Japanese.

But you have no idea where to start.

You’ve probably seen a few TikToks or Reels where people explain a few phrases here and there. Maybe you’ve read a thing or two online, in sites such as Tae Kim’s Guide or Tofugu.

But you sometimes wish there was some sort of guide to learn Japanese, a list of resources that you can easily follow or refer to in your journey to learn Japanese.

You wish there was a road map that could tell you where to go when you need to learn specific aspects of this beautiful language.

As someone who has studied Japanese on his own since 2005, I know the frustration. I know what it’s like to not know exactly where you need to head next on your journey.

That’s why I’ve put together this handy list of resources for learning Japanese.

Learning any language is difficult, but learning Japanese is especially so if you’re starting out from a language such as English.

However, if you have the right resources and the knowledge of how and when to use them, learning Japanese is also a beautiful journey full of amazing rewards.

So let’s dive into the list I’ve prepared of the 5 resources that will help you on this journey.

But first, let’s talk a little bit about the basics of the Japanese language. I promise this will make everything easier, since it’ll help you better define your goals and focus on what you need to learn at the right time.

Note: Looking for something a little more advanced? Check out my guide on Japanese numbers.

The Components of the Japanese Language

All languages are made up of different parts.

Grammar, vocabulary, speaking, listening, writing are just a sample of the many components that make up any given language.

With Japanese, we have the added complexity of its writing system, which is unique to the language.

In order to advance in your journey to learn Japanese, you’ll need to first understand the components of the Japanese language.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to define your own goals for learning Japanese and you’ll also be better prepared to choose the right resources for your goals.

For me, Japanese is basically made up of the following components:

Grammar
Reading/Writing
Kanji/Vocabulary
Speaking/Listening

You might notice that grammar is the first item on that list.

Whether your goal is simply to learn a few simple phrases or to reach native-level proficiency, you will need to study at least some Japanese grammar.

That’s just a reality of learning Japanese.

The language is just way too different from English.

Whereas with Spanish, French, Italian, German, and other European languages, you can quickly start saying a few simple things without studying even a bit of grammar, Japanese is so different from these languages, that you will need to dedicate some time to learn at least some grammar fundamentals.

For some, the idea of studying grammar seems intimidating, boring, or even tedious. For others, learning grammar can be one of the most satisfying parts of learning a language.

(I fall in the latter category, in case you’re wondering )

The good news is that, no matter what your stance is on studying grammar, there are resources available to help you learn the amount of grammar that’s right for you.

If you just want the very fundamentals, there’s a resource for you. If you want intermediate- to advance-level grammar, there’s a resource for you.

After learning some fundamental grammar, it’s up to you to decide what your goals are for learning Japanese.

Do you want to learn to read and write Japanese or just speak it?

Do you want to learn a few phrases to navigate a vacation in Japan or do you want to achieve native-level proficiency some day?

Once you’ve defined your goals, you’ll be able to pick and choose from this list of resources the right one for your goals.

You also may have noticed I put kanji and vocabulary together.

We’ll talk more about kanji later on, but these are basically Chinese characters that Japanese has borrowed and uses as part of its writing system.

Though learning kanji requires some dedicated study at the beginning, after you’ve learned some fundamental kanji, many other kanji are best learned as you learn new Japanese vocabulary (new words).

This is the reason why I’ve coupled them as a single component.

With that explanation done, we can finally move on to the main attraction, the list.

1. Barron's Japanese Grammar

For the absolute beginner to Japanese, I always recommend Barron’s Japanese Grammar. Barron’s book is an inexpensive, clear, and concise look into the fundamentals of Japanese grammar.

From the very basics of Japanese’s Subject-Object-Verb word order (which is different from English, which uses a Subject-Verb-Object word order), to a look at how various parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) work in Japanese, to a detailed introduction to Japanese particles (similar to English prepositions), Barron’s book addresses all the fundamentals without overwhelming its readers.

The best feature that makes this book excellent for beginners is that it does not use the Japanese writing system for its examples.

It does teach you the basics of reading and writing Japanese, but it doesn’t impose on its readers by demanding they master reading Japanese characters in order to advance.

While you will want to start learning Japanese characters sooner rather than later, I think it’s extremely valuable to have a book that allows you to learn grammar even before you become adept at handling Japanese characters.

Best of all, if you are still undecided on whether learning Japanese is something you’d actually like to pursue, you can use Barron’s Japanese Grammar to help you make up your mind with a minimal investment of both time and money.

If you do decide to pursue learning Japanese, then Barron’s book will be a great resource in letting you get a good start on your journey.

If you decide to not pursue Japanese any further, then that’s okay, you only spent a couple of bucks and gained valuable information about your goals and interests.

Regardless of your decision, there is no doubt that Barron’s Japanese Grammar is an excellent resource for learning Japanese.

You will learn about Japanese sentence structure, how words in a sentence relate to each other, and how to start “thinking in Japanese,” even if you have a very small vocabulary.

The book also includes a handy table of katakana and hiragana—two of the three writing systems Japanese uses simultaneously—which you can continuously refer to as you learn how to read and write Japanese.

If you’re just starting out and are looking for a book to learn Japanese fundamentals, make it Barron’s Japanese Grammar. It will give you a solid foundation that will be invaluable no matter what your goals for learning Japanese are.

Great for:

Anyone starting out
Grammar
Reading/Writing

Not great for:

Kanji/Vocabulary
Speaking/Listening

2. Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication

Once you have a grasp on the most fundamental grammar points, you’ll quickly find yourself wondering where to go next to learn the grammar you need to express all sorts of common things.

Look no further than Taeko Kamiya’s Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication.

The basic premise of Kamiya’s book is genius: rather than teaching you grammar in a dry and purely academic way, she instead uses actual common sentences and teaches you the grammar behind them.

By breaking up Japanese grammar into these sentence patterns, Kamiya teaches you, not just grammar, but a slew of real-life expressions that you will actually need to express meaningful things in Japanese.

From how to describe things and draw attention to them, to how to express potential action (“I can…”), to how to express conditional action (“If I…”), to how to create compound sentences, Kamiya’s book is pretty comprehensive.

Even at my current level of Japanese, where I can read Japanese comics and non-finction Japanese prose pretty comfortably, I still find myself referring to this book from time to time to clear up some things.

The book is also very accessible for beginners while remaining valuable for advanced learners of Japanese.

All Japanese sentences are written in katakana, hiragana, and kanji (more on kanji later), but also include romanizations so anyone can read them, no matter their current skill level in reading and writing Japanese.

If you’ve gotten into Japanese and learned the very basics of the language, I absolutely recommend you pick up Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication.

It is one of the absolute best resources available for making the transition from beginner to intermediate Japanese.

To me, it is an absolute must-have resource for learning Japanese.

Great for:

Transitioning from beginner to intermediate level
Long-term reference
Grammar
Reading/Writing

Not great for:

Kanji/Vocabulary
Speaking/Listening

3. Duolingo

The past two items have focused mostly on grammar, because—as I mentioned earlier in the post—for learning Japanese, you will need to study at least some grammar.

As great as those grammar resources are, however, they don’t address two other very important aspects of learning Japanese: kanji/vocabulary and speaking/listening. That’s where Duolingo comes in.

Launched in 2011, Duolingo has become one of the biggest and most used language-learning apps in the world.

Its interactive, gamified approach to learning languages has proven extremely effective in getting people interested in learning languages all over the world, and has succeeded in breaking down barriers to entry.

Best of all, Duolingo offers its entire content completely free (with ads), so as long as you have access to a computer, a smartphone, or a tablet, you can get started learning Japanese for no additional cost.

Since it’s free, you might have expected Duolingo to be number one on this list.

However, as I have mentioned before, with Japanese, you really need to get some fundamental grammar points out of the way first, and, as great as Duolingo is, grammar is actually Duolingo’s weakest point.

If you go into learning Japanese on Duolingo without some independent grammar study under your belt, you’ll quickly find yourself doing exercises where you know the right answer but don’t really understand why.

Where Duolingo does shine, however, is in its speaking and listening resources.

Language books are great for learning grammar, but there’s very little they can offer in terms of speaking and listening. That’s where an app—especially one as incredibly well designed as Duolingo—proves invaluable.

Among its many features, Duolingo offers speaking and listening exercises.

Not everyone has a local Japanese-speaking community readily accessible, and connecting with people online can be intimidating, time-consuming, and difficult to coordinate.

Without access to native speakers of the language you’re learning, an app is the next best thing for practicing speaking and listening.

Aside from actual listening exercises (where you are required to listen to a voice clip with no subtitles and answer what you’ve heard), almost all exercises of any kind are voiced, which means you can practice listening and speaking (if you read them aloud) constantly while playing Duolingo.

Duolingo also stands out in reading and writing, since it includes special lessons for learning katakana and hiragana.

You can also set the kanji in the exercises to be written with hiragana and katakana pronunciation guides or just the kanji alone.

You will also learn tons of vocabulary as you advance through the lessons, from common everyday words, to highly specialized vocabulary like legal and scientific.

In short, Duolingo is weak for grammar but excellent for pretty much everything else.

From beginners (who already have some grammar knowledge) to very advanced learners, you can’t go wrong with Duolingo for learning Japanese.

Great for:

Speaking/Listening
Reading/Writing
Kanji/Vocabulary

Not great for:

Grammar

4. StudyKanji.net

Few things can inflict panic on learners of Japanese quite like kanji.

Kanji (漢字) are Chinese characters that have been borrowed into Japanese and that are used together with katakana (カタカナ) and hiragana (ひらがな) to write Japanese.

That’s right: Japanese uses three writing systems simultaneously, and learning to read and write Japanese means learning all three.

While katakana and hiragana (collectively called “kana”) are relatively easy to learn (each character is a syllable), kanji is an entirely different beast.

Each kanji could represent either an entire word or part of a word, depending on context, and each kanji usually has at least two readings (a Chinese reading, called on-yomi, and a Japanese reading, called kun-yomi).

Some kanji are drawn with just a few simple strokes (like 三), but many are made up of more than 10 strokes (like both kanji in 複雑).

To top it all off, people who grow up in Japan are expected to know somewhere around 2000 kanji by the time they graduate high school.

The reality is learning kanji takes time and dedication.

There are no shortcuts and no magic way to cram thousands of foreign characters into your brain in a short amount of time.

What you can do is make learning kanji easier and more efficient so it doesn’t become a painful experience and you don’t spend more time than you really need to on learning them.

That’s where StudyKanji.net can help you.

There are many kanji learning tools out there. I won’t compare tools here, I will simply discuss the method that worked for me.

After years of trying various approaches, the one that worked for me was, instead of focusing on memorizing kanji, I decided to focus on recognizing kanji.

Getting your brain to memorize boring information is hard and your brain will fight you, but getting your brain to recognize things is easy: that’s literally what the brain does all the time.

I didn’t need to know all sorts of information on a kanji, I just needed my brain to not forget the kanji I had studied.

I can learn as much information as I want on a kanji later on as needed. But first I just need my mind to not forget it.

What this approach meant in practice was that I would focus on trying to recognize a kanji by carefully looking at it (literally like inspecting a picture or a drawing) and I would learn just two bits of information about it: its general meaning and one reading.

Not two readings.

Not every possible meaning.

Just one reading and one general meaning.

With this approach, and with a tool like StudyKanji.net, I was able to focus on retaining kanji instead of focusing on memorizing stuff about kanji.

Why is StudyKanji.net the tool that worked best for this approach?

StudyKanji.net is a flashcard software that allows you to configure it so you match a kanji to one of its readings.

Other software I have tried allow you to match a kanji to all its readings, but not just one reading.

By allowing you to hone in on just one reading, StudyKanji.net is the perfect tool for focusing on recognizing and retaining kanji.

You’ll still need to repeat these flashcard exercises a couple of times until your brain recognizes the kanji.

As I mentioned earlier, learning kanji will take time and practice.

But by focusing on recognizing, you’ll be able to retain kanji more quickly and with much less effort than if you try to memorize a bunch of information about them.

Once your brain can recognize the kanji, it’ll be much easier to learn other things about it.

Another great feature of StudyKanji.net is that it doesn’t impose its own idea of what the “best” order to learn kanji is.

It categorizes kanji into the five JLPT levels (JLPT is a standardized Japanese proficiency test), but it doesn’t impose any order on you nor gatekeep you in any way. You are always free to choose whatever flashcard deck you want from any of the JLPT levels.

I myself still have a lot of kanji to learn.

But at my current level I am able to play video games and read manga and online articles in Japanese with infrequent kanji lookups.

It took some time, but it didn’t take twelve years of formal study and I kept my sanity along the way.

For more formal texts (like some newspapers and older literature texts) I still require relatively frequent kanji lookups, but I’m okay with that for now.

Also bear in mind that even native Japanese speakers today struggle a lot with kanji.

Digital writing systems (computers, smartphones, etc.) automatically perform kanji lookups as you type, so even native Japanese speakers today simply recognize a kanji when they see it in their keyboard suggestions and don’t necessarily know a lot of information about it.

In short: learning kanji is complicated and time-consuming for everyone (even native Japanese speakers), so the best we can hope for is to make the process easier and more efficient for ourselves.

Focus on recognizing, not memorizing. Don’t sweat it, and use StudyKanji.net as your best tool to find a way forward in learning kanji.

After you learn the most important kanji (mostly those in JLPT levels N5, N4, and N3), you’ll start to see that learning kanji after that will happen more organically as you learn vocabulary.

You’ll learn new kanji naturally as you learn new words, and you’ll find that the amount of dedicated study time you have to devote to new kanji decreases as your vocabulary grows.

Great for:

Kanji/Vocabulary
Reading/Writing

Not great for:

Grammar
Speaking/Listening

5. Jisho.org

Whew, that was a long section.

But don’t worry, I promise this one will be much shorter.

There is one tool that everyone who is learning Japanese absolutely needs at all times: a good Japanese dictionary.

Of all the English-Japanese dictionaries I’ve tried, the one I have come to constantly rely on is Jisho.org.

Jisho.org (“jisho” is the Japanese word for “dictionary”) is simply an amazing tool.

It automatically recognizes whether you’ve typed English or Japanese, gives you comprehensive lookups for all words, breaks down individual kanji for you and allows to look at them in surprising detail, and offers loads of example sentences.

It also gives you detailed information on the classification of Japanese verbs, something you’ll come to appreciate as you progress in learning Japanese.

It’s free, it’s online, it’s comprehensive, and it’s extremely easy to use.

You really can’t go wrong with Jisho.org as your main dictionary. I have it as a pinned tab in all my browsers. It truly is an indispensable tool.

Great for:

General reference
Kanji/Vocabulary
Reading/Writing
Grammar

Not great for:

Speaking/Listening

Conclusion

Learning Japanese is an incredibly rewarding experience.

Especially when you’re learning Japanese on your own, however, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to head next or what resources to rely on.

I hope the five items on this list can help you on your journey to learn Japanese, whether your goal is to learn a few phrases for getting around or achieving native-level proficiency.

Before you go!

If you enjoyed this post and would like to show your appreciation, you can support me on Ko-fi!

Any donation will be greatly appreciated and will help me keep creating more awesome content like this.

The post 5 Resources for Learning Japanese appeared first on José Carlos Bonilla.

Languages Archives - José Carlos Bonilla

Japanese desu – The Japanese copula

Basics

Complex sentences

Advanced topic – The copula in relative clauses

Conclusion

Japanese Numbers: from 0 to 10 and 1 trillion

Table of Contents

Powers of 10

More from the blog

Japanese desu – The Japanese copula

Oh, Man (10,000)

Japanese Numbers from 0 to 10

The Japanese Number Naming Pattern

Ten Thousand Breaks the Mold

Ten Thousand Is One Man

One Million in Japanese

The Road to 1 Trillion in Japanese

The Yen and Japanese Instagram Followers

The Yen

Japanese Instagram Follower Count

Conclusion

Before you go!

5 Resources for Learning Japanese

Table of Contents

The Components of the Japanese Language

1. Barron's Japanese Grammar

2. Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication

3. Duolingo

4. StudyKanji.net

5. Jisho.org

Conclusion

Before you go!

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