More about Japanese Numbers

Japanese Numbers 20 - 90

Mar

15

2009

In order to form the number 20 in Japanese, you add the number for 2 in Japanese with the number for ten. In the previous post I talked about how you need to add in order to form the numbers 11- 19. Well for the numbers 20 - 90 you need to multiply. If you multiply 2 times 10 you get 20 right? So that’s the strategy that will hold true starting from the numbers 20 to 90. Here are the numbers from 20 to 90:

20 - nijuu (にじゅう)

30 - sanjuu (さんじゅう)

40 - yonjuu (よんじゅう)

50 - gojuu (ごじゅう)

60 - rokujuu (ろくじゅう)

70 - nanajuu (ななじゅう)

80 - hachijuu (はちじゅう)

90 - kyuujuu (きゅうじゅう)

One thing I want you to pay attention to is that there is only one standard option to pronounce the numbers 20 -90. For the numbers 0-19, some numbers had two, even three options for pronunciation. There is only one way to pronounce the number 40. It’s yonjuu (よんじゅう) not yojuu (よじゅう) or shijuu (しじゅう). The same goes for 70 and 90.

Alright, that’s it for today.