Lesson 4 - counting

In this lesson we tackle one of the most difficult 'basic' concepts in Japanese: counting. Counting in Japanese is hard. Especially at first; it's hard because every category of items you're counting has its own special counting word, and you need to know about 40 common ones to be able to say you can "count in Japanese" at all. That means lots of counter particles this lesson. Lesson 4 also covers some more basic grammar as promised by the last lesson's conversation section.

Topics covered in this lesson are:

• joining up sentences internally with と, and externally with でも, そして, ので and しかし, as well as looking at のです
• Essential skills: counting
• counters
• Kanji: 40 old and new kanji to pit your wits against.

This lesson mostly focusses on learning how to count, so there isn't a great deal of extended grammar in it other than things related to counting. It might sound silly that one should have to dedicate an entire lesson to this subject, but you'll change your mind on this soon enough. Buckle down, and let's get with the numbers

- Pomax