Counting and its various topics is generally going to be one of those areas that you’ll probably never get truly comfortable with in a second language.
That doesn’t mean you should give up on the topic, but it does allow you to put into perspective what is achievable, and more importantly what is not.
You will be able to find many people who are near-native in a second language, but will still do the most basic calculations using their native language. There’s a lot of rote memorisation and other techniques that make this the case, and no one wants to unlearn all these (or relearn their equivalents in another language).
There’s even some research that points to how certain languages are not very ‘transparent’ when it comes to the name for a number versus it’s value on the number line. For example, out of the languages I have spent a few minutes looking at, French stuck out as having one of the worst number systems ever. But then again their bread is delicious so the French aren’t all bad.
This article looks at several continental languages and particularly focuses on Dutch, pointing out that young children who count in Dutch don’t seem to do as well versus their counterparts in the UK on certain number problems, and their hypothesis is that the structure of the language or numbering system puts an extra mental strain on these children.
Also mentioned are Chinese, Japanese and Korean, which are praised for their more methodical counting system. I guess at some level I agree with them, but not everything is as straightforward on the surface.
So let’s look at a random article that contains a fair few numbers to see how Japanese will deal with having to present some data:
「クソ野郎」と言われる人々に共通する性格特性はあるのか？
In the third paragraph, the opener goes like this, 集められた約400人の被験者に質問をぶつけたところ
Here we have one of the classic number issues in Japanese for both natives and JSL’ers alike: counters. I’ve done an AMAZING video on counters that you can watch below to get a good introduction to the topic here:
From about 3 minutes of the above video, I talk about the counter 人, so we can know that 400人 is read as よんひゃくにん and means 400 people. These 400 people were surveyed to understand what the definition of ‘asshole’ is.
In my opinion this word is totally overused, especially by Americans. As an Australian, we have an issue as our accent means we pronounce ‘ass’ more like an upper-class Brit, so you’ll find many Australians switch to the American nasally pronunciation of this word to give it a bit more oomph.
The next number that pops up in the article is from this snippet: 約3分の1(35.26％)を占め. First, we have this useful counting word of 約（やく）which means approximately, and then the next part is read as さんぶんのいち.
Now this is definitely something you have to get used to in Japanese, in that they structure fractions the opposite way that us English speakers are used to. 3分の1 is actually one third, so the denominator is said first, then joined to the numerator with の.
To spell out 35.26％ would be さんじゅうごてんにじゅうろくパーセント, notice the use of 点（てん）to denote the decimal point. Japanese people often shorten % to パ.
Similarly, we then have 約半数(50.13％)を占め, with this word 半数（はんすう） meaning half the number.
Next we have 男性が約8割(79.35％), which introduces the concept of 割（わり）, which stands for 10 percent, thus ８割 meaning 80 percent.
Finally, one of the last examples of a number format is another counter, with 14カテゴリ rearing its head in the 2nd last paragraph. カテゴリ stands for category, so there are 14 categories.
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