Japanese counter word

In Japanese, as in Chinese and Korean, numerals cannot quantify nouns by themselves (except, in certain cases, for the numbers from one to ten; see below). For example, to express the idea "two dogs" in Japanese one could say 二匹の犬 ni-hiki no inu (literally "two small-animal-count POSSESSIVE dog"), or 犬二匹 inu ni-hiki (literally "dog two small-animal-count"), but just pasting 二 and 犬 together in either order is ungrammatical. Here is the number "two", is the counter for small animals, is the possessive particle (a reversed "of", similar to the "'s" in "John's dog"), and is the word "dog".

These counters are not independent words; they must appear with a numeric prefix. The number can be imprecise: nan or, less commonly, iku can be used to mean "some/several/many", and, in questions, "what/how many/how much". For example, "some guests" can be translated as 何名様 nan mei-sama (lit. "some people-count honored-ones"), and "how many guests?" as 何名様？ nan mei-sama? (lit. "what people-count honored-ones QUESTION"). Some nouns prefer 幾 iku, as in 幾晩？ iku-ban? "how many nights?" and iku-nichi mo itte ita "I was gone for many days."

Counters are similar in function to the word "pieces" in "two pieces of paper" or "cups" in "two cups of coffee". However, they cannot take non-numerical modifiers. So while "two pieces of paper" translates fairly directly as 紙二枚 kami ni-mai (lit. "paper two flat-count"), "two green pieces of paper" must be rendered as 緑の紙二枚 midori no kami ni-mai, akin to "two pieces of green paper".

Just as in English, different counters can be used to convey different types of quantity. In English, one can say "one loaf of bread" or "one slice of bread". In Japanese, the equivalents would be パン一斤 pan ikkin (lit. "bread one-loaf") and パン一枚 pan ichimai (lit. "bread one-flat-count").

Grammatically, counter words can appear either before or after the noun they count. They generally occur after the noun (following particles), and if used before the noun, they emphasize the quantity; this is a common mistake in English learners of Japanese. For example, to say "[I] drank two bottles of beer", the order is ビールを二本飲んだ bīru o nihon nonda (lit. "beer OBJECT two-long-thin-count drank"). In contrast, 二本のビールを飲んだ nihon no bīru o nonda (lit. "two-long-thin-count POSSESSIVE beer OBJECT drank") would only be appropriate when emphasizing the number as in responding with "[I] drank two bottles of beer" to "How many beers did you drink?".

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