Volume 8: "Counting by Twos" or "Two by Two, Quoth the Octopus"
Last time, we looked at big numbers. This time we will look at small numbers becoming big numbers.
In a perfect world, everything would be counted with even numbers. Everyone would have two eyes, four mouths, and eight hundred and eighty-eight pieces of chocolate to fit in the four mouths.
Here is a helpful diddy for counting those chocolates by twos:
ni (2), shi (4), ro (6) no ha (8) no to (10)
Or if you want to be cute, let's ask the help of a purple octopus:
「ちゅうちゅうたこかいな」
chuu chuu tako kai na
You may think this means something like, "(Chuuchuu) Are you an octopus?"
But the かいな apparently is 腕 (arm--normally "ude" but "kaina" is another reading). So we hear the sound of the octopus and talk about the octopus and his arms in order to count to ten--all quite natural and logical.
"huh?" you say?
Two (2) chuu's and eight (8) legs make ten (10)!
For more on this in Japanese, check this website out (scroll to bottom)
