Study Japanese With Me

12時(じゅうにじ/jyuuniji) → “12 o’clock”

11時(じゅういちじ/jyuuichiji) → “11 o’clock”

10時(じゅうじ/jyuuji) → “10 o’clock”

9時(くじ/kuji) → “9 o’clock” (The last tricky one - notice that “9” is pronounced as “く/ku” here, not “きゅう/kyuu”)

8時(はちじ/hachiji) → “8 o’clock”

7時(しちじ/shichiji) → “7 o’clock” (Here’s another tricky pronunciation that will need your attention lol)

6時(ろくじ/rokuji) → “6 o’clock”

5時(ごじ/goji) → “5 o’clock”

4時(よじ/yoji) → “4 o’clock” (Pay attention to this pronunciation! Do you remember I explained at the Numbers episode that “4” can have different pronunciations, depending on what word comes after? Here’s one example! “4 o’clock” is pronounced “よじ/yoji”, not “よんじ/yonji” or “しじ/shiji”)

3時(さんじ/sanji) → “3 o’clock”

2時(にじ/niji) → “2 o’clock”

1時(いちじ/ichiji) → “1 o’clock”

夜(よる/yoru) means “evening/night”, can replace 午後(ごご/gogo) when talking about night hours

昼(ひる/hiru) means “noon” and can be used before a number, replacing 午後(ごご/gogo), to indicate “afternoon”

朝(あさ/asa) means “morning” and can be used before a number when talking about morning hours, replacing “午前(ごぜん/gozen)”

午後(ごご/gogo) → used before the number to indicate “p.m.”

午前(ごぜん/gozen) → used before the number to indicate “a.m.”

Welcome to the first season! In this one we’ll be studying how to talk about time in Japanese. In this first episode, let’s learn how to ask “What time is it now?”: 今何時ですか (いまなんじですか/ima nan ji desu ka) → 今(いま/ima) means “now”, 何(なん/nan or なに/nani) means “what”, 時(じ/ji) means “hour/o’clock”, です(desu) means “to be” and か(ka) is a question particle, can be replaced by “?”.

「Transcription」『1 (いち/ichi), 2 (に/ni), 3 (さん/san), 4 (よん/yon), 5 (ご/go), 6 (ろく/roku), 7 (なな/nana), 8 (はち/hachi), 9 (きゅう/kyuu), 10 (じゅう/jyuu), 11 (じゅういち/jyuuichi), 12 (じゅうに/jyuuni), 13 (じゅうさん/jyuusan), 14 (じゅうよん/jyuuyon), 15 (じゅうご/jyuugo), 16 (じゅうろく/jyuuroku), 17 (じゅうなな/jyuunana), 18 (じゅうはち/jyuuhachi), 19 (じゅうきゅう/jyuukyuu), 20 (にじゅう/nijyuu), 30 (さんじゅう/sanjyuu), 40 (よんじゅう/yonjyuu), 50 (ごじゅう/gojyuu), 60 (ろくじゅう/rokujyuu), 70 (ななじゅう/nanajyuu), 80 (はちじゅう/hachijyuu), 90 (きゅうじゅう/kyuujyuu), 100 (ひゃく/hyaku), 1000 (せん/sen)』 「Hey there! In case you’re literally a beginner and you know nothing about Japanese, let me explain something before we go into today’s topic: there are 3 writing systems in Japanese: Hiragana (used to represent sounds or phonemes and verb conjugations), Katakana (used for words adapted from others languages, usually English) and Kanji (derives from Chinese, each symbol represents a “meaning”, not a specific phoneme. It is used with most Japanese names and words). For this explanation, I’ll use the Kanji for each number and also the Hiragana (to show those who already know it how to pronounce each word). But for those who are not familiar with the Japanese writing system, I’ll also use romaji, which is basically how we represent the pronunciation of Japanese words with our alphabet. If you’d like me to make a podcast explaining a little about their writing system, contact me through my email: “niki.gengo@icloud.com”. If many of you are interested, I’ll do it ^_^」 Ok, now let’s get to today’s topic: counting from 1 to 9999 in Japanese is pretty easy. You just gotta memorize numbers from 1 to 9: 一 (いち/ichi), 二(に/ni), 三 (さん/san), 四 (よん/yon), 五 (ご/go), 六 (ろく/roku), 七 (なな/nana), 八(はち/hachi), 九 (きゅう/kyuu) and 十 (じゅう/jyuu). Then 100 (百 → ひゃく/hyaku) and 1000 (千 → せん/sen). The rest is actually logical - for example, 11 is 10 (十) + 1 (一) = 十一. 20 is 2 (二) x 10 (十) = 二十. What about 21? Easy! 2(二) x 10(十) + 1(一) = 二十一. For numbers greater than 99, you’ll use the same rule. For example, how would we say 2020? 2 x 1000 + 2 x 10 = 二千二十. For those who are ready to go a little deeper, 4 can also appear as し(shi) and 7 as しち(shichi), depending on the context. There might also be other minor pronunciation differences according to which word comes after the number, for example: in 9 o’clock, 9 will be pronounced as く(ku). But I won’t go into these details on this episode, don’t worry about that right now. Focus on learning the standard numbers. I’ll slowly mention each one of these smaller variations as soon as we need them. You’ll see they aren’t that difficult and they’re actually meant to make the pronunciation of the word easier, just like when we say “em” instead of “them”, or when we contract the auxiliar verb like “ll” instead of “will”, “re” instead of “are” etc. Just take it easy, and take your time learning each number before going worrying about these details, ok?