I learned about counters in the context of ordering stuff, for example "ビール一つをおねがいします". I remember the lesson specifically stating that the counter should not come after the "を" and that the counter has to directly attach to the word. But I am in a lesson now with multiple sentences where the counter is at different places. Here are the examples directly from the textbook.
"昨日もう一匹猫を買いました" (why is the counter before "猫" and not after? Is it because the counter here attaches to "もう" and not to "めこ"?)
"猫を3匹飼ってるから、今からうちにこない?" (now the counter is after the "を", why not "三匹猫を" or "猫三匹を" ?)
Does the order even matter or is the meaning always the same regardless of where I put it, I am so confused about this and the textbook never explains any of this.
Thank you!
by PhilipZ96
7 comments
That’s an interesting question, I’m gonna follow for an answer
Word order of nouns in Japanese is generally very free compared to English, as long as the necessary particles are attached to the nouns they are marking. Counters usually don’t take particles(since they count the number of nouns being counted, and that noun usually already has a particle), but they can depending on where they are in the sentence because they are nouns. They can also be away from the noun they are counting, and because we have different counters for different types of nouns, there is less confusion than an English sentence.
Do you remember which resource you found the rule where the counter is not supposed to come after を? I’m interested in what the context was.
A couple of points to make:
>ビール一つをおねがいします
I’m not sure if this is an example sentence, but the correct form would be 「ビールを一つお願いします」
In many cases, especially where the counter is counting the number of items in the direct object, it will go right next to the verb. I guess you could think of it as acting like an adverb in this situation? The main sentence is ビールをお願いします, and 一つ (more commonly 一本 for bottles of beer or 一杯 for glasses of beer) is telling how many of the direct object you want.
That’s what’s going on in this sentence:
>猫を3匹飼ってるから、今からうちにこない?
For this sentence:
>昨日もう一匹猫を買いました
It’s not 一匹 by itself. It’s part of the phrase もう[#][counter] which means [#] more of [thing]. So in this instance it means 3 more cats. Some common examples of this are もう1回 “one more time (sometimes もっかい in slang) or もう一杯 “one more drink.”
Cure Dolly has a slightly related video about counters which you might find helpful: https://youtu.be/OA78aKz0oIQ
I always have been too, but they seem to come just before the verb when in a polite request.
From what I learned you have two options:
1. Place counter before noun you count using の.
Ex.: ２台の車があります。
2. Place counter right before verb. This method doesn’t require any particles.
Ex.: 車は２台あります。
In given example 「昨日もう一匹猫を飼いました」I guess の particle between 一匹 and 猫 is omitted. I see this sometimes, but fairly rare comparing to other particles like を being omitted.
Which resource explicitly stated that the counter can’t come after the object marker? That’s suspect. The counter can easily be and is most frequently used adverbially.