Improving comprehension of large numbers?

Japanese Language Questions
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As the title says.

I’m somewhere between N3 and N2 in Japanese level, but large numbers completely kick my butt.

Like…I can’t grasp them at all. I see 2357万 and I have to first write out 23570000 and then go back through and add commas to 23,570,000 before I can even decipher what number it equates to. And forget doing it in my head…

Does anyone have any suggestions for practice one can do to become more able to comprehend large numbers without having to translate painstakingly into English?

Because they really twist me up in knots =(

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3

No, but I’ll stalk this thread hoping that someone does give some pointers.

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4

How about making some flashcards and practicing?

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5

I reckon the trick is memorising shortcuts - i.e. 100万 = 1 million, 10億 = 1 billion,１兆 = 1 trillion and so forth.

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That’s not a bad idea. I might make two-way Anki cards for each multiplier… that’s only nine notes, because I can skip １兆、10兆、100兆 since those - thank lord - finally line up with English again.

１万 ten thousand
10万 one hundred thousand
100万 one million
1000万 ten million
１億 one hundred million
10億 one billion
100億 ten billion
1000億 one hundred billion
1000兆 one quadrillion

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I second this! I think that problem lies with the units aligning with English up to the thousands place. Since this breaks down at the ten thousands place, it makes processing numbers in your head a little bit more difficult. Rather than just recognize unit names, you also have to adjust for the difference places per unit 3 (in English) and 4 (in Japanese).

I’ve done the same thing, and it has helped me a lot with translating between the two systems.

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I struggle so much with this as well

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