The fourth post of the series -13 Secret Techniques to Put You on the Fast Track to Fluency in Japanese.
In my last post in this series I showed you how you could master the numbers from one to ten by associating them with easy to remember catch phrases found in phone numbers. The joy of numeracy doesn't end at 10 however, in fact real mastery of Japanese numbers starts at 10,000. Unlike English, where large numbers are counted in units of one thousand until one million, in Japanese large numbers are counted in units of 10,000 until 100 million. Giles Murray in his book 13 Secrets to Speaking Fluent Japanese outlines a technique to divide large numbers into 10 bands and choose a representative statistic as a reference you can call on at any time.
MARKETS-JAPAN-STOCKS/ by artemuestra, on Flickr | CC BY-SA 2.0
It's a good idea, but there are two problems I have with the way they are presented in 13 Secrets. Giles doesn't emphasise the natural way kanji can assist in breaking down large numbers in to readable chunks. The statistics are also well out of date and seem to centre around dry economic figures that I just can't relate to, but more about that later. Let's approach the first problem with just a little kanji under our belts.
Kanji from 1 to 10.
This is a really good extension from last week's telephone numbers game, because again it emphasises the natural way Japanese learn numbers. Sound out the following kanji from one to ten.
The four zeroes.
Sounds like a really good name for a Japanese punk band right? It could be, but it relates to the way numbers jump into the next range of magnitudes. Remember how I said Japanese count to 10,000 and start a new set of numbers to count by? The western world counts three zeroes, you can see it in how the comma is placed in the examples below. Look at the right hand column though.
The first four darker rows include numbers in the range of 4 zeroes to 7 zeroes and is signified by 万 （まん|man）. The orders of magnitude in this band are denoted by 一、十、百、千 (1,10,100,1000). The next four grey rows are signified by 億 （おく｜oku） with 8 zeroes and the count starts again from 一 to 千 with a new zero each time. The last 2 rows are signified by 兆 （ちょう） with 12 zeroes. By the time you get here the numbers are so large that it doesn't go much sense to go any further than 十兆 （じゅっちょう｜jucchou） with a whopping 14 zeroes.
| Roman Numerals | Kanji |
| 10,000 | 一万 （いちまん|ichiman） |
| 100,000 | 十万 （じゅうまん｜jyuuman） |
| 1,000,000 | 百万 (ひゃくまん｜hyakuman） |
| 10,000,000 | 一千万 (いっせんまん｜issennmann） |
| 100,000,000 | 一億 （いちおく｜ichioku） |
| 1,000,000,000 | 十億 （じゅうおく｜jyuuoku） |
| 10,000,000,000 | 百億 （ひゃくおく｜hyakuoku） |
| 100,000,000,000 | 一千億 （いっせんおく｜issenoku） |
| 1,000,000,000,000 | 一兆 （いっちょう ｜icchou） |
| 10,000,000,000,000 | 十兆 （じゅっちょう｜jucchou） |
So all you really need to know are the numbers from 一 to 十、百、千、万、億、and 兆 and to start counting again after four zeroes.
The problem of relevance.
If something is going to be memorable, it has to be interesting. I'm no good at pulling big numbers out of thin air so I spent a bit of time on Wolfram|Alpha the worlds first computational knowledge engine. I wanted to know more about Japan, the Japanese language and culture.
The first thing I did was find out about the Japanese language, because there are bound to be some interesting statistics about the number of speakers in certain places around the world. It's probably something I should really know about too.
Native speakers per country:
Source: Wolfram|Alpha | Japanese language
These numbers cover 3 orders of magnitude, two that use 万 and one that uses 億. I can start to fill in my table with these statistics, and create example sentences.
| Roman Numerals | Kanji | English statement | Japanese translation |
| 10,000 | 一万 （いちまん|ichiman） | In Australia there are 12,000 people that speak Japanese. | オーストラリアには日本語を話せる人が一万二千人います。 |
| 100,000 | 十万 （じゅうまん｜jyuuman） | In the United States there are 805,000 people that speak Japanese. | アメリカには日本語を話せる人が八十万五千人います。 |
| 1,000,000 | 百万 (ひゃくまん｜hyakuman） | ||
| 10,000,000 | 一千万 (いっせんまん｜issennmann） | ||
| 100,000,000 | （いちおく｜ichioku） | In Japan there are 126,000,000 people that speak Japanese. | 日本には日本語を話せる人が一億二千六百万人います。 |
| 1,000,000,000 | 十億 （じゅうおく｜jyuuoku） | ||
| 10,000,000,000 | 百億 （ひゃくおく｜hyakuoku） | ||
| 100,000,000,000 | 一千億 （いっせんおく｜issenoku） | ||
| 1,000,000,000,000 | 一兆 （いっちょう ｜icchou） | ||
| 10,000,000,000,000 | 十兆 （じゅっちょう｜jucchou） |
I'm missing two numbers for the last two orders of magnitude in the first range. Perhaps I can continue in the same way with population figures.
Tokyo, Japan Populations:
Let's imagine for a moment that I'd like to live in Tokyo. I could determine how many people live in both the city of Tokyo and the greater metropolitan area. So now I have all orders of magnitude that use 万 covered and some example sentences I can relate to. This is where things start to get difficult.
Looking at statistics that use 億 I start to run out of figures that I can easily relate to, the last one that makes any sense to me is the population of China. The number of of people in Japan is dwarfed by its neighbour by an order of magnitude, there are by latest estimates 1.31 billion people living in China.
| Roman Numerals | Kanji | English statement | Japanese translation |
| 10,000 | 一万 （いちまん|ichiman） | In Australia there are 12,000 people that speak Japanese. | オーストラリアには日本語を話せる人が一万二千人います。 |
| 100,000 | 十万 （じゅうまん｜jyuuman） | In the United States there are 805,000 people that speak Japanese. | アメリカには日本語を話せる人が八十万五千人います。 |
| 1,000,000 | 百万 (ひゃくまん｜hyakuman） | 8,337,000 People live in the city of Tokyo. | |
| 10,000,000 | 一千万 (いっせんまん｜issennmann） | 37,200,000 People live in the greater metropolitan area of Tokyo. | |
| 100,000,000 | 一億 （いちおく｜ichioku） | In Japan there are 126,000,000 people that speak Japanese. | 日本には日本語を話せる人が一億二千六百万人います。 |
| 1,000,000,000 | 十億 （じゅうおく｜jyuuoku） | China has a population of 1,310,000,000 people. | |
| 10,000,000,000 | 百億 （ひゃくおく｜hyakuoku） | ||
| 100,000,000,000 | 一千億 （いっせんおく｜issenoku） | ||
| 1,000,000,000,000 | 一兆 （いっちょう ｜icchou） | ||
| 10,000,000,000,000 | 十兆 （じゅっちょう｜jucchou） |
Astronomical figures.
To go beyond these figures you have to get astronomical, or perhaps economical. Much larger numbers come from the worlds of economics, mathematics and science, the problem now becomes "how I can I find a number that I can easily relate to?" I could tell you the number of years it takes light from the earth to reach the edge of the galaxy, or the value in dollars wiped off global stock markets in 3 months following the Lehmann Brothers collapse, but would you find that interesting?
So here is my challenge to you, find a large number, that fills one of the open spaces on the table above and make it really interesting. You may want to use Wolfram|Alpha (computational knowledge engine) as a source of these large numbers. For the four best answers I have another four google wave invites to give away.
Other posts in this book review series
- Book Review: 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese - Introduction
- Secret #1 for Speaking Fluent Japanese - Abbreviations
- Secret #2 for Speaking Fluent Japanese - Explanatory Phrases
- Secret #3 for Speaking Fluent Japanese - Readable Phone Numbers
- Secret #4 for Speaking Fluent Japanese - Statistics
- Secret #5 for Speaking Fluent Japanese - Hypothesis
- Secret #6 for Speaking Fluent Japanese - Synonym Generator
