Adventures with Japanese Numbers Counting, Usage, and Culture

by Bird, R. Byron; Mezaki, Reiji

• ISBN13: 9784770030986
• ISBN10: 4770030983
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-06-01
• Publisher: Kodansha USA

Summary

Unfortunately for those language learners with backgrounds in science and engineering, most Japanese textbooks don't treat numbers in much depth, beyond a basic explanation of how to count. Most give little or no guidance in expressing even familiar concepts like fractions and percentages, and none go into powers or square roots. This is where Adventures with Japanese Numbers comes in. Authored by professional chemical engineers, Adventures with Japanese Numbers is the first book to give a general overview of how numbers are used in Japanese. After first covering the basics of how to count, the book moves on to more complex ideas--ordinal numbers, equal distribution, indefinite numbers, polygons and polyhedrons. Here it also teaches cultural ideas concerning the use of numbers: how the Japanese count on their hands, the idea of lucky and unlucky numbers, and the concept of counters. But that's only the beginning. The book also goes into the use of numbers in prefixes and suffixes; individual words containing numbers; and numbers used in geographical and personal names. It then goes on to show examples of idioms, proverbs, sayings, and famous haiku that contain numbers. At the end of the book is some purely entertaining information: Japanese mnemonics for remembering pi and the square root of 3; comical names involving numbers; and fruits and vegetables that sound like they're made up of numbers.

Author Biography

R. Byron Bird and Reiji Mezaki are professors of chemical engineering. Bird has written a Japanese-language textbook series called Technical Japanese, published by the University of Wisconsin Press.