A Mnemonic for Counters
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007Hi everyone!
Do you have difficulty remembering the counters for small animals (匹・ひき・hiki) and minutes (一分・いっぷん・ippun)? When you count these, as you might know, sound changes as below.
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When just starting out, one might think, “Oh my gosh! What a complicated language!” However, don’t worry. That’s not the case anymore! “Peter” can help you remember the sound changes when counting small mammals and minutes.
Just remember this sentence:
“Peter Has Brown Hair Hi Pi Hi Pi Hi Pi…”
What does this sentence do?? Let’s break this sentence down word by word, and look at the sounds in each word.
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So what do you think? Was this helpful?
Posted by Miho Okano in Teaching Japanese |
June 13th, 2007 at 12:38 am
very useful!
does it work with other counters as well?
mikuji
June 13th, 2007 at 12:43 am
Miho先生！かなりすごいです！I really, really like this one, as sometimes I even forget the minutes.(笑）A couple things I would like to add.
1) I do have brown hair.
2) After reading your mnenomic sentence, I tweaked it a bit for my own sake:
Peter has braided hair, hippy, hippy, hippy.
What do you think? Will that work?
June 13th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Mikuji-san, お久しぶりですね！Yes, I too would like to know!! Miho先生お願いします！
I really like the minute one, as minutes are used so often!
June 13th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Is this just coincidence or did Peter read this article before using 匹 in last week’s intermediate lesson? (今日、男は一匹じゃなくて、二匹がいます）
June 13th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
>mikuji さん
こんばんは！
Unfortunately, this sentence doesn’t always work for every single counters. But, there are some other counters which follows this sentence, such as 本- for thin and long object - （いっぽん、にほん・・・） and 杯 - for the drink in a glass/cup - （いっぱい、にはい）.
For the ones that don’t follow the sentence, you can always make your own sentence. Let’s try!