ki and dai after numbers
 

hi there
what is difference between ichidai and ikki or nidai and niki ?

thanks

What are these counters you're referring to? 〜台？I'm not sure what 〜き you're talking about...

If I were you, I wouldn't even start worrying about learning the counters before I learned the kana.

台（だい） = cars, machines, appliances, etc.
機（き） = airplanes

thanks a lot
its true
:ywave:

Haha, I'm pretty sure I understood what's going on here, but just to clarify 機（き）is a counter used for airplanes? I can safely say that I have not encountered this once in a conversation. I guess we don't have airplanes flying around here, but still! 台 is something that I hear all the time though.

Sashimister, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask a question about counters. A few months back someone told me that when writing horizontally, in Japanese you use Arabic numerals (ie 1 2 3 4 5 6...). When writing vertically, Japanese use kanji. The person said that is the "general rule", but I've seen that rule broken quite a few times. Are there certain counters that just look better with kanji-numbers and certain counters that look better with Arabic numerals? Could it be a personal style thing?

i heard this in a television learning program !

How do you count airplanes around where you live, then? 機 is the ONLY counter I've ever read or heard airplanes being counted with in my half-century-long life as a Japanese-speaker.　I couldn't even think of an alternative counter. When announcements are made on domestic flights, the word used to mean "this aircraft" is always 当機（とうき）.

That is the general rule and I think I can safely say that I see vertually no exceptions to the rule in the printed media, which is only natural because that's visually the easiest way for us to communicate with one another when using numbers and counters. Needless to say, though, I am not including websites in my discussion for obvious reasons.

What I suspect that you may be mixed up about this rule is the following. When we see a "phrase" consisting of a smaller number and a simpler counter, we sort of consider it to be a word. Examples are 二人、一人前 (one order/portion of food), 三位 (third place), etc. These words are very often written in kanji even when written horizontally.

With larger numbers, it's more obvious which one looks "better" and "easier" in most people's eyes. You simply aren't going to see 「２４,８３０人」 written vertically. You will, however, see 「８人」 written both vertically and horizontally.

Last thing I want to add, which I'm not quite convinced that many Japanese-learners are aware of, is that the general Japanese public are far more used to using Arabic numerals than the kanji numerals. We spend little time using kanji numerals in arithmetic in elementary school or in real life. This means that we have a hard time remembering numbers if we see them in kanji. Just thought to add that because I have a feeling that some of you may have thought the opposite way.

an important Question !!

when we are counting cars we say ichidai ,... and for shoes we say issoku and for airplanes ikki !!!
now , is there lots of these numbers?? somewhere ichi the other one is and ik . oll of these refers to one object !! seems to be so hard !

Umm it is just how the counter works.. it is still saying ichi いち, but when said with ki the pronunciation changes from ichi, to i いっ, this is a small tsu っ, used to indicate a brief pause between the i, and the ki. and it is written in romaji by using a double consonant.. in this case "kk"

Counters in Japanese are frigging endless, there is even a drinking game Japanese people play using the billion different counters they have.

Yeah, and the letter "n" becomes "m" before consonants like "p" and "b" in English.

in (not) + possible = impossible
in (not) +pass = impasse

It's just a phonetic rule, and it makes a lot of sense. It's far easier to say いっき than いちき.