Nouns & gender
No gender. No plural. No case endings. A Japanese noun never changes shape — 本 is 本 whether it is one book, many books, the subject or the object. Everything a European language does with endings, Japanese does with particles that sit after the noun.
What Japanese has instead, and what genuinely takes work, is counters.
Counters
You cannot say "three books". You must say "books, three-bound-volumes":
本を三冊買いました hon o sansatsu kaimashita
The counter tells you what kind of thing is being counted — the same idea as Chinese classifiers, and Japanese has more of them.
| counter | for | example |
|---|---|---|
| つ -tsu | the universal fallback (1–9) | ひとつ, ふたつ, みっつ |
| 個 ko | small objects | りんご三個 — three apples |
| 人 nin | people | 三人 sannin — but 一人 hitori, 二人 futari |
| 匹 hiki | small animals | 猫二匹 |
| 頭 tō | large animals | 馬三頭 |
| 羽 wa | birds — and rabbits | 鳥二羽 |
| 本 hon | long thin things | ビール三本 — three beers |
| 枚 mai | flat thin things | 紙五枚 — five sheets |
| 冊 satsu | bound volumes | 本二冊 |
| 台 dai | machines, vehicles | 車一台 |
| 杯 hai | cupfuls | コーヒー二杯 |
Two things worth knowing early: 本 the counter for long thin objects is the same character as 本 "book" (which takes 冊 instead), and rabbits are counted with the bird counter — a monastic dodge from when four-legged meat was forbidden and rabbit was reclassified as poultry.
When you cannot remember the counter, つ will carry you to nine and nobody will mind.
Sound changes in counters
Counters fuse with numbers, and the joins are irregular in a small, learnable set:
| 一 | 三 | 六 | 八 | 十 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 本 | いっぽん ippon | さんぼん sanbon | ろっぽん roppon | はっぽん happon | じゅっぽん |
| 匹 | いっぴき | さんびき | ろっぴき | はっぴき | じゅっぴき |
| 冊 | いっさつ | さんさつ | ろくさつ | はっさつ | じゅっさつ |
The pattern — h → p after a small tsu, h → b after n — is the same 音便 collapse you meet in Past tenses.
Two number systems
| native (和語) | Sino-Japanese (漢語) | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ひとつ hitotsu | いち ichi |
| 2 | ふたつ futatsu | に ni |
| 3 | みっつ mittsu | さん san |
| 4 | よっつ yottsu | し／よん |
The native set is used with つ and for a handful of words (一人 hitori, 二日 futsuka); the Chinese-derived set is used with almost every counter and for maths, prices and phone numbers.
Making nouns from verbs and adjectives
| verb stem | 飲む → 飲み nomi (a drink), 話す → 話 hanashi (a talk) |
| い-adj → さ | 高い → 高さ (height), 大きい → 大きさ (size) |
| の / こと | 食べるのが好き — I like eating |
Naming people
Family name first: 田中太郎 is Mr Tanaka whose given name is Tarō. Attach さん to the family name, never to your own — and never to your own name at all.
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