Learn Japanese: Dates of the Month
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
Just when you thought you knew the Japanese number system along comes the next wave of number-based words to throughly throw you out of whack.
The Japanese language has different counters for everything ranging from animals, round items (eg pencils), flat items, people and various other inanimate objects.
Sounds scary? Let’s tackle one thing at a time and then we’ll move on and eventually it will all be second nature – I guarantee it ^_^
While not strictly a counter, the dates of the month are of course based on the same building blocks from one to ten but come with their own unique patterns.
Despite the imposing list of kanji below, you’ll be pleased to know that dates are almost always written just with the Arabic numeral followed by the “day” kanji eg ２日 rather than 二日.
A full date like what you might see on a movie poster or train ticket would read as ２００３年４月２日 which is the 2nd April 2003 (2 day 日, 4 month 月, 2003 year 年).
Japanese dates are always written from right to left but in the format yyyymmdd, which is the reverse of the standard UK/Australian date format of ddmmyyyy and different again from the USA (mmddyyyy).
The standard rule for dates is the normal number plus “nichi” eg juu-roku-nichi (16th). However that goes out the window when we come to the 14th, 20th and 24th of the month plus of course the 1st-10th of the month.
| Date | Kanji | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | 一日 | tsu-i-ta-chi |
| 2nd | 二日 | fu-tsu-ka |
| 3rd | 三日 | mi-k-ka |
| 4th | 四日 | yo-k-ka |
| 5th | 五日 | i-tsu-ka |
| 6th | 六日 | mu-i-ka |
| 7th | 七日 | na-no-ka |
| 8th | 八日 | yo-u-ka |
| 9th | 九日 | ko-ko-no-ka |
| 10th | 十日 | to-u-ka |
| 11th | 十一日 | juu-ichi-nichi |
| 12th | 十二日 | juu-ni-nichi |
| 13th | 十三日 | juu-san-nichi |
| 14th | 十四日 | juu-yo-k-ka |
| 15th | 十五日 | juu-go-nichi |
| 16th | 十六日 | juu-roku-nichi |
| 17th | 十七日 | juu-shichi-nichi |
| 18th | 十八日 | juu-hachi-nichi |
| 19th | 十九日 | juu-ku-nichi |
| 20th | 二十日 | ha-tsu-ka |
| 21st | 二十一日 | nijuu-ichi-nichi |
| 22nd | 二十二日 | nijuu-ni-nichi |
| 23rd | 二十三日 | ni-juu-san-nichi |
| 24th | 二十四日 | ni-juu-yokka |
| 25th | 二十五日 | ni-juu-go-nichi |
| 26th | 二十六日 | ni-juu-roku-nichi |
| 27th | 二十七日 | ni-juu-shichi-nichi |
| 28th | 二十八日 | ni-juu-hachi-nichi |
| 29th | 二十九日 | ni-juu-ku-nichi |
| 30th | 三十日 | san-juu-nichi |
| 31st | 三十一日 | san-juu-ichi-nichi |
This is so helpful! Thank you very much ^_^
Both your kanji worksheets and verb/adjective sheets have been very useful! :D
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LikeThat's great to hear - thx! ^_^
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LikeThanks so much for this! Very helpful. Do you happen to know any sites which show the months and years?
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LikeThx Natalie - will try to get those done up for you soon.
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LikeThanks for this piece of information. I just started to this language myself and am very happy that you've shared with us this article. It was very confusing to see some of the dates end with -ka or -nichi.
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LikeThanks for the explanation! The numeration in
Japanese can be quite confusing so it's good to see everything
nailed down.
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Like