Page 197 - Easy Japanese - Learn to Speak Japanese Quickly! (TUTTLE)

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GRAMMAR NOTE Counting Days

The classifier for both naming and counting days is: ka or nichi. When naming
the days of the month, you only go up to the 31st, but when counting days, you
can go a lot higher. So, go-jū nichi can only mean “fifty days” while tōka can

mean “the tenth of the month” or “ten days”. Here is the chart for all the days of
the month.

Please note the following:
• the first day of the month is tsuitachi (naming) while one day is ichi-nichi
(counting).
• The Japanese number series with the classifier -ka is used up through ten,
and then the Chinese number series with -nichi is used for the rest.
• two exceptions: hatsuka “the 20th” or “20 days” and combinations ending

with four such as jū-yok-ka and ni-jū-yok-ka.
• Nan-nichi asks “what date?” or “how many days?” Please distinguish
between “what day of the month” by using nan-nichi and “what day of the
week” by using nan-yōbi.