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…
- ひとり
- ふたり
- さんにん
- よにん
- ごにん
- ろくにん
- しちにん
- はちにん
- きゅうにん
- 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.
