Are You Old or Late? Let’s Find Out
Since this episode is about introducing yourself, it wouldn’t be complete if you couldn’t get your age across to other people now would it? Numbers and counting can be a bit tricky in Japanese, so we’re going to keep it extra base-level for now and just introduce numbers in the sense of time and age. Let’s begin!
Vocabulary:
| Kanji | Kana | English |
| 何 | なに/なん | What |
| 歳/才 | さい | Years old |
| 今 | いま | Now |
| 時 | じ | O’clock |
| 午前 | ごぜん | AM |
| 午後 | ごご | PM |
Numbers
Before you can use numbers to tell someone your age or the time, you’re going to need to learn those numbers. Just like kindergarten again, very exciting. Below you will find a list of the numbers zero through ten.
| Kanji | Kana | English |
| 零 ／ 〇 | ゼロ／れい | Zero |
| 一 | いち | One |
| 二 | に | Two |
| 三 | さん | Three |
| 四 | よん／し | Four |
| 五 | ご | Five |
| 六 | ろく | Six |
| 七 | なな／しち | Seven |
| 八 | はち | Eight |
| 九 | きゅう／く | Nine |
| 十 | じゅう | Ten |
Side Note: You may have noticed that four, seven, and nine have multiple pronunciations. The reasoning behind this is very interesting, and eventually there will be an article posted discussing it. For right now, it’s important to recognize both pronunciations as they’re both used reasonably frequently depending on what exactly you’re counting. On this list they’re ordered in the way you would generically count to 10.
Numbers beyond ten are also really easily written once you recognize the pattern that’s present. For example, the number twenty is just two tens, thirty two is just three tens and two ones, etc. See below for a visual.
| Kanji | Kana | English |
| 十一 | じゅういち | Eleven |
| 二十三 | にじゅうさん | Twenty three |
| 四十二 | よんじゅうに | Forty two |
| 七十五 | ななじゅうご | Seventy five |
| 百 | ひゃく | One hundred |
You may have noticed a random curveball thrown in up there! That’s the word for hundred. We aren’t going to get into numbers higher than one hundred right now since, for our purposes, we’re focusing on age and people don’t generally get much older than 100 (If you’ve found the fountain of youth please send me an email.)
Age
To express your age, all you need to do is add 〜さい to the end of the number of years old you are and you’re done! It’s like a suffix for your age!
Examples:
| Kanji | Kana | English |
| ２歳 | にさい | Two years-old |
| ５歳 | ごさい | Five years-old |
| ３９歳 | さんじゅうきゅうさい | Thirty nine years-old |
Side Note: The kanji for “years old” is 歳 but can also be written as 才 if you don’t want your hand to hurt. They all mean the same thing, but for now, we’ll just write it as 〜さい.
Irregular Ages
The counter 〜さい attached to numbers causes certain ages a slight change in pronunciation, thankfully to make things easier to say. Here are some of the irregularities.
| Kanji | Kana | English |
| １歳 | いっさい | One year-old |
| ８歳 | はっさい | Eight years-old |
| １０歳 | じゅっさい | Ten years-old |
| ２０歳 | はたち／にじゅっさい | Twenty years-old |
All the number phrases shown to you so far have their origins in Chinese. But Japanese used to have its own number phrases (we’ll get into that later.) It’s for this reason why “twenty years-old” has the totally different reading はたち, since age twenty has had cultural significance as the age of adulthood. It can also be still read normally as にじゅっさい.
Now that you can express your age, it’s about time we toss these phrases into some useful sentences, don’t you think?
Examples:
| Kanji | Kana | English |
| 何歳ですか。 | なんさいですか。 | How old are you? |
| 十歳です！ | じゅっさいです！ | I’m 10 years old! |
A quick little explanation of the sentence なんさいですか is in order! At the beginning of this lesson in the vocabulary section you learned the word for “what”. When this word is used in conjunction with a counter (like age or time) it will change from なに to なん for easier pronunciation. From there, the sentence itself is really literal. なんさいですか translates as “what age are you,” but you can also think of it as “how many years are you?” Sounds a little odd in English, but we’re speaking Japanese! We’ll be doing this same なに to なん conversion down below in the time section, so be ready.
Time
Time is a really important concept in any language. If you can’t tell time, how will you know when to get to your morning classes or more importantly, when happy hour is? For these two reasons alone, let’s learn how to tell time! First, we’re going to learn how to ask the time and then you’re going to learn how to understand someone responding to your question. It’s all baby steps.
Remember when we talked about how to ask what someone’s age was? Well, to ask someone what the time is you just replace the word さい with the counter じ to get なんじですか. This small change makes the sentence translate to “what time is it”. If you want to, you can also add いま to the beginning of the sentence to really specify “what time is it now”.
As you move further into the course you’ll begin to realize that a lot of language is just cutting and pasting phrases together inside of predetermined patterns. Though, that just makes your job easier, doesn’t it?
Next you’ll learn how to understand the answer to the question you just asked. Below is a chart showing 1 o’clock to midnight. All you really need to understand is that you take the number you learned above (with the slight exception of four and nine o’clock, see below) and add the counter you just learned じ and you have “NUMBER o’clock.”
| Kanji | Kana | English |
| 一時 | いちじ | One o’clock |
| 二時 | にじ | Two o’clock |
| 三時 | さんじ | Three o’clock |
| 四時 | よじ | Four o’clock |
| 五時 | ごじ | Five o’clock |
| 六時 | ろくじ | Six o’clock |
| 七時 | しちじ | Seven o’clock |
| 八時 | はちじ | Eight o’clock |
| 九時 | くじ | Nine o’clock |
| 十時 | じゅうじ | Ten o’clock |
| 十一時 | じゅういちじ | Eleven o’clock |
| 十二時 | じゅうにじ | Twelve o’clock |
If you want to say “it is 3 o’clock,” just add です to the end of your phrase and you’ve got さんじです.
You can even be a more specific with little more effort and add AM/PM. All you have to do is add ごぜん for AM or ごご for PM to the start of the time phrase! So, 4:00 AM would be ごぜんよじ．
Now, assuming you will want to talk and understand times that aren’t exact hours, you need to learn how to talk about what the minute hand does as well! Below, you will find a chart outlining how the minutes are said. Generally, you just say the number of minutes followed by ふん which means “part.” Get it? Minutes are “part” of an hour, but as you will see on the chart, some numbers change for pronunciation’s sake, so keep an eye out for those.
| Kanji | Kana | English |
| 一分 | いっぷん | One minute |
| 二分 | にふん | Two minutes |
| 三分 | さんぷん | Three minutes |
| 四分 | よんぷん | Four minutes |
| 五分 | ごふん | Five minutes |
| 六分 | ろっぷん | Six minutes |
| 七分 | ななふん | Seven minutes |
| 八分 | はっぷん | Eight minutes |
| 九分 | きゅうふん | Nine minutes |
| 十分 | じゅっぷん | Ten minutes |
| 十四分 | じゅうよんぷん | Fourteen minutes |
| 二十四分 | にじゅっぷん | Twenty four minutes |
We didn’t include a chart showing all the minutes, but you should be able to get the idea from the examples above since you know all the numbers from 1-60 easily enough. Now to look at some example time phrases!
Examples:
| Kanji | Kana | English |
| 午後四時二十五分 | ごごよじにじゅうごふん | 4:25 PM |
| 午前三時三十七分 | ごぜんさんじさんじゅうななふん | 3:37 AM |
| 午前七時五十九分 | ごぜんしちじごじゅうきゅうふん | 7:59 AM |
Another thing you should know is that there’s also a shorter way to say thirty when talking about minutes. Do this by replacing さんじゅっぷん with はん which means “half.” For example, 5:30 PM would be ごごごじはん if you say it this way. In general, using はん is the more common way reference thirty minute intervals.
Side Note: Yes, that last example had a lot of ご in it. That’s why we were saying 5:30 and not 5:55 PM (which would be ごごごじごじゅうごふん.)
Before you move on…
…You should be able to count to 100 and then using that numerical knowledge, ask someone their age and tell someone your age in return. Finally, a clear understanding of how to tell time down to the minute. If you’ve got all stored securely in your brain, you’ve survived this lesson and can move on to the final lesson of this episode. If you haven’t survived this lesson, how are you reading this?
カツ猫 Katsukats 