To be fair, zero is a complicated number
I’m sure the chinese have equivalent memes about having to learn arabic numbers, at least you don’t have to use it in written out numbers, 20 is 二十, two-ten, 200 is 二百, two-hundred, 2000 is 二千, two-thousand, 200,000 is 二十万, two-hundred-thousand.
There less memorizing irregular words like twelve and X-teen and converting 30 to thirty, since it’s all pronounced as written.
It probably sounds silly but I quite enjoy not memorizing different names for days of the weeks and months like when I was learning french … Lundi, Mardi …
Nice to be like 星期一，星期二，星期三 … for week days and 一月，二月，三月… for months.
Same, and not having to remember different versions of words for tense and gender is great. Where Chinese gets you back though, is measure words. Is a can of beans many 颗? 粒? One 包? Oh I was supposed to remember 罐?
I don’t mind the measure words so much because you can always use the generic one and people will understand, it’s the tones that really mess me up.
I mean tbf you’re addressing a can of bean, so 罐 is correct. It’s the container that count, not the content.
Japanese pronounces some numbers different depending on what you are counting. Is this the same for Chinese?
Bro first of all, no one should ever freeze a gyro, second, will you please elaborate because that is 100% interesting
Basically certain words use a different counter, and it changes how you would say 1, 2, 3 etc. so there is a counter for big living things, small living things, flat things, round things, money etc. A lot of the numbers are similar with slight changes in pronunciation.
So instead of ichi for 1, it might be ippon, ittou, issoku etc. if you know it’s a counter you can usually tell what the number is from the start of the word. Though there are exceptions like hitotsu, which is also one. Though if they use the “Chinese” characters you can know what it means when reading it without knowing how it’s actually pronounced.
I think there are certain phrases found in different dialects of Chinese. In Cantonese, the formal way of reading twenty is 十二, but the colloquial term would be 廿.
Edit: Should be 二十
No, but whenever you have something that’s countable (even if it’s just 1), you have to do <number> <measure word> <thing>, so instead of “I have a ticket” or “we want 2 waters”, you have to do “I have 1 <measure word for flat things> ticket” or “I(plural) want 2 <measure word for cups> water”.
There’s a generic measure word, but I think it’s seen as improper to use it.
Yea, Chinese people understand when you do that, but they first look at you with this confused look thinking ‘he wants two chopstic pieces?’ and then realize you have a vocabulary of a two-year-old.
Source:lived in China long enough to learn yo ask for things, but not long enough to learn the countable nouns.
Afaik, no. Japanese either uses 音読み onyomi = Chinese reading (literally “sound reading”, 音 = sound, 読み = reading) and 訓読み Kunyomi = Japanese reading (訓 has multiple kanji meanings. I learned it as “instruction”. Sites list the meanings as 訓 = instruction, Japanese character reading, explanation, read) for words that have kanji (Chinese characters). The original Chinese characters don’t have a “Japanese reading” afaik. They are Chinese after all.
