Heyo everyone, this is a very random post but I was wondering if there was a specific counter for gloves? I know the counter for flat things such as paper would be 〜枚 but I rly don’t think gloves would fit into that category.
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Googled quickly and found this:
手袋 は左右2枚で「双」「対」と 数え ます。
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That means the box contains fifty pairs, right?
Pretty sure disposable gloves are labelled the same way in English, actually - the box contains “100 gloves”, meaning 100 individual gloves.
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Those do look rather 着脱しやすい!
I also had no idea that polyethylene was ポリエチレン in Japanese. I’ve never really thought about “chemical” terminology in Japanese and am only now realizing that they all seem to use /t/ (like メタノール or メントール) rather than /s/ (like マラソン or アスリート). I suppose they were borrowed from German rather than English. The more you know!
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Why German?
It’s usually a good guess for science and medical loanwords. Though I assume they had some pronunciation-based reason as well.
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Ah, really? I didn’t even know that. I always thought everbody just adapted the latin and greece terms somewhat to their language.
Actually, to be really precise - they dont come in pairs, as in a left and a right. They come in 100 gloves that has no specific features. If you need to use one glove only, you can do that, you dont need to use for both hands.
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Oh, I know. By “pair” I meant more “sets of two” rather than “matched opposites”.
There are a couple of medical and/or scientific terms that exist in other languages as well but mimic the German pronunciation, e.g. アレルギー or カプセル, as well as terms that are taken directly from German with no English or Latin equivalent, e.g. ギプス or レントゲン.
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Hey guys I was just reading an Article of counters and it says that when counting specifically “pair” of gloves you use 組
組 (くみ)
The 組 counter is used to count a set, a group, or a pair of something. Quite commonly, you’ll see it used to categorize classrooms too. One class will be named ４組 (fourth class group), another ８組 (eighth class group). If you’re watching Japanese TV or reading Japanese manga, and someone’s going to school, this will surely show up!
Counts: a couple of lovers, a couple of groups, a pair of earrings, a pair of gloves or mittens, a set of playing cards, a set of futon bedding, a set of stacked food boxes, a jacket and pants suit set, as an ordinal number suffix for a classroom number, etc.
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Dude, this information is golden 
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