Question regarding Japanese counters

Well, some of them I obviously know. Kittens being a litter. But, those wild cats! :rofl:

You find it weirder than a murder of crows? :astonished:

I never said that. I’m not a native speaker so I really haven’t had much use for the animal group counters in English before. I just found the sad treatment of the wild cats compared to the cute tame ones funny.

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„A blessing of unicorns” isn’t likely to be of any practical use, but it’s nice to know. So are 90% of those Japanese counters, topping of the cake, things you might want to learn after you’re already fluent in Japanese, and new words get glued with what you already have without effort, so you hear them once or twice and then you find you have them in active vocabulary. No need to learn them earlier, in my opinion.

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Tragically, neither alligators nor crabs have an entry on that list. Crocodiles, however, are a “bask”, and I’m gonna go ahead and invent a “scuttle” for crabs, so clearly the word for Crabigators would be a “scuttlebask”.

What do you call two crows standing together? Attempted murder.

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I like watching a nice murder from afar.

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:rofl: Awesome!

Yeah this is my approach to them too. It’s like in English the necessary ones are almost part of the word like a sheet of paper, a gaggle of gewgaws, a loaf of bread, a pair of shoes, etc. Well, I suppose one of those is pretty obscure. :wink:

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Well, you can have a gaggle of people, can’t you? Don’t know what gewgaws are though! :joy: (don’t worry I’ll google it momentarily…)

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I wouldn’t worry about the counting system. I got by just fine in Japan with 一つ、二つ、三つ、。。。for about a year. There are so many other usefull areas to focus on first if you are a beginner, before going down the counters hole. When you are ready, I usually use at least one of these in every daily conversation i have:
1.Master all time counters first 日、月、年、時、分、etc.
2.個 こ
2.人 り or にん
3.本 ぽん (not a counter for books, that’s 冊)
4.枚 まい
5.裁 さい
6. 番目 ばんめ

If you find a reason that you need to branch out beyound these, congratulations you are creeping into intermediate territory… enjoy your slow slip into madness. :slight_smile:

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Don’t know that one :thinking: what is it counting ? Sewing points (or more like cuts I guess)? Judges?

Typo of 歳/才? Considering the “everyday” angle.

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!! Wow, I absolutely didn’t think about that.
I was thinking “wait, is there a common counter I have been missing all those years??”
I was tricked by the kanji and didn’t make the connection.

That also explains why I couldn’t find anything in my dictionary.

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You are correct, thank you.

I just wanted to share this

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That video was awesome, thanks for sharing. :slight_smile:

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