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HOW THE LANGUAGE WORKS<br />
■ Counting<br />
286<br />
Women also tend to use emotional interjections more than<br />
men, such as ‘kawai’ (cute!) or ‘suteki!’ (marvellous!). To<br />
express surprise when meeting somebody unexpectedly,<br />
women tend to say ‘ma!’ or ‘ara!’, which are never used by<br />
men, who tend to say ‘ya!’ or ‘o!’.<br />
Counting<br />
Japanese has two sets of numbers from one to ten:<br />
set 1 set 2<br />
1 ichi hitotsu<br />
2 ni futatsu<br />
3 san mit·tsu<br />
4 yon/shi* yot·tsu<br />
5 go itsutsu<br />
6 roku mut·tsu<br />
7 nana/shichi* nanatsu<br />
8 hachi yat·tsu<br />
9 kyu/ku* kokonotsu<br />
10 ju to<br />
The first set is used when referring to expressions of time,<br />
quantities and measurements.They are used with the classifiers<br />
on the opposite page or with count words such as<br />
‘minute’,‘yen’ etc:<br />
go-fun ichijikan mae<br />
five minutes an hour ago<br />
gozen shichiji ni ju-en<br />
at 7am 10 yen<br />
* The alternative numerals in the first set above must be used<br />
in the following time expressions:<br />
yoji shichiji kuji<br />
four o’clock seven o’clock nine o’clock<br />
The second set of numbers is used for counting any other<br />
things not mentioned above.The number is placed after the