Counting Numbers in Japanese

Counting numbers in Japanese

In today's post we look at how numbers are read in Japanese.

The basic numbers

From 1 to 10

From 11 upwards

And so on… up to 99, which is 九十九 (kyuu juu kyuu)

Hundreds / thousands / millions / billions

HUNDRED: 百 [ひゃく] hyaku : 100 
*Note in the numbers below, “hyaku” changes its sound:
三百 [ さんびゃく] sanbyaku : 300
六百 [ろっぴゃく] roppyaku : 600
八百 [はっぴゃく] happyaku : 800

THOUSAND: 千 [せん] sen : 1000
*Note in the numbers below, “sen” changes its sound:
三千 [さんぜん] sanzen : 3000
八千 [はっせん] hassen : 8000

TEN THOUSAND: 万 [まん] man : 10000
*Note 10,000 is read “ichiman”, not simply “man”. By contrast, 100 is read “hyaku” and not “ichi hyaku”, and 1000 is “sen” and not “ichi sen”.
Japanese does not read 10,000 or 100,000 the way Vietnamese does; both are expressed in units of “man”, for instance: 100,000 = 10 man, 10,000 = 1 man

*Note: Note too that Japanese counts in groups of 4 digits while Vietnamese counts in groups of 3. Vietnamese uses the units “thousand, million, billion, thousand billion, million billion, billion billion”. Below a hundred, of course, and for the odd digits in between, it counts in “hundreds, tens, units”.
Japanese, on the other hand, counts in the following units:
万 man = man, 10^4 (ten thousand)
億 oku = oku, 10^8 (hundred million)
兆 chou = chou, 10^12 (million million)

Here is a summary of how the large numbers are counted, from Vietnamese into Japanese:
1000 = 千 (sen)
10.000 = 万 (man)
100.000 = 十万 (juu man
1.000.000 = 百万 (hyaku man)
10.000.000 = 千万 (sen man)
100.000.000 = 億 (oku)
1.000.000.000 = 十億 (juu oku)
10.000.000.000 = 百億 (hyaku oku)
100.000.000.000 = 千億 (sen oku)
1.000.000.000.000 = 兆 (chou)
10.000.000.000.000 = 十兆 (juu chou)
100,000,000,000,000 =百兆 (hyaku chou) (a hundred thousand billion)
1,000,000,000,000,000 =千兆 (sen chou) (a million billion)
10,000,000,000,000,000 = 一京 (ikkei) (ten million billion)

Zero in Japanese

Zero was not an easy thing to invent: as proof, Roman numerals have no zero. Compared with the other numbers, zero came along much later. In Japanese, zero is usually borrowed from English as “ゼロ”. The kanji 零 (LINH) is also used, read “Rei”. In counting, however, Japanese people use “zero”, while “rei” is used mostly in kanji compounds such as:
零度 (reido) [linh độ] = 0℃

*Note: One more important note: the numbers 4 and 7 each have 2 readings.
In most cases you will use only <yon> for 4 四:
四回 yon-kai = four times
四階 yon-kai = the fourth floor
四百 yon-hyaku = four hundred
The same goes for seven 七 (doesn't it look like an upside-down 7? ^^): mostly <nana> is used
七回 nana-kai = seven times
七階 nana-kai = the seventh floor
七百 nana-hyaku = seven hundred
So how are “shi” and “shichi” used? Usually when you are simply counting, as in boxing or when counting the moves you have done (in karate, say), where you count “ichi ni san shi go roku shichi hachi kyuu juu”.

Remember too that nine 九 can also be read <ku>, for instance:
19日（十九日） juu-ku nichi = the 19th, or
19日（十九日） juu-kyuu nichi = the 19th
Ten (十) can also be read <ju> instead of <juu>, or <じっ> with a doubled consonant (a small “tsu”):
十分 juppun = 10 minutes
十分 juu-fun = 10 minutes
十分 [じっぷん] jippun = 10 minutes
Broadly, there are many readings because what matters most with numbers is reading them quickly and easily; Japanese people read them in whatever way comes most readily off the tongue. You will have to get used to this too as you learn to count in Japanese.

See also:
Japanese Vocabulary for Measurement and Geometric Shapes
Japanese Vocabulary to Do with Contracts