One thing we use a lot, but probably don’t realize is when we count people. “There are I’d say 15 people over there.” or “We have 6 people”. We use this quite a bit especially when it comes to groups of people.

To count people we will use にん at the end of the a number, basically. Here is 1 through 10. 1, 2, 3…

1. ひとり
2. ふたり
3. さんにん
4. よにん
5. ごにん
6. ろくにん
7. しちにん
8. はちにん
9. きゅうにん
10. じゅうにん

Be sure to notice 1, 2, and 4. 1 and 2 are the exceptions, fortunately it is simple to remember. ひとり is 1 person and ふたり is 2 people. You will encounter these in other counters so you just end it with り. Just a quick not that can help with other counting. Most of the time ひと will be と as the second character and for ふたり’s second character will be た. This got me for a while I kept getting them backwards. Finally is よにん this basically just drop the ん in よん.

Here is an example how you can use this counter in a sentence.

私のクラスには日本人のがくせいがさんにんいます

The structure is

person が X にん います

Note: remember います deals with existence of a person.

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Maki Maki’s Page

Calendar property of Maki Maki follow link for more info.

As you go through learning Japanese one thing comes up in the basics, Times and Dates.  Below is a table for dates like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc…, and Sunday through Saturday.  Sorry, I don’t have the kanji for the days, but you should be able to build it yourself farily easily with a bit of research on it   Please look over the table and start learning it becomes important and is simple to some degree once you see the patterns.  Check here for Months in Japanese.

Calendar

Summary

For the first 10 days and 20 you just have to memorize it. I have yet to figure out a way to remember without pure memorization.  However, the rest of the days are easy to figure out.  They look complex but really aren’t.

To figure out the days from the 11th – 31st (minus 14th, 20th, and 24th) you are just building numbers and adding nichi (-にち) onto it.  Here are some examples:

• 15th – (15- jugo) – day (nichi)  – jugonichi (じゅうごにち)
• 18th – (18 – juhachi) – day (nichi) – juhachinichi (じゅうはちにち)
• 22 – (22 – nijuni) – day (nichi) – nijuninichi (にじゅうににち)
• 28 – (23 – nijusan) – day (nichi) – nijusannichi (にじゅうはちにち)
• 30 – (30 – sanju) – day (nichi) – sanjunichi (さんじゅうにち)
• 31 – (31 – sanjuichi) – day (nichi) – sanjuichinichi (さんじゅういちにち)

So much like numbers in Japanese dates are very similar, because they are numbers , you just build them.

I hope this helps let me know if you need more info or not.

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• Months in Japanese

Learning months is pretty easy basically just join the number 1 through 12 to がつ (gatsu).

This was pretty easy to understand and figure out once you make the connection it is 1gatsu, 2gatsu, 3gatsu, etc…  Combine that basic information with the kanji for numbers and month and you are looking like you know and can read write some advanced stuff.

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