In this lesson we will take a look at the various words used to describe family members in Japanese—some of which simply don’t exist in English and other languages. Also, we will learn the method of counting people which uses a special set of Japanese vocabulary, known as ‘counters.’
Family members
For each family member, Japanese have several different terms, some of which are honorific, and some neutral. Simply speaking, the honorific names are used for referring to or addressing people outside of your own family circle, whereas the neutral names are used when talking to others about your own family. Nevertheless, this is not always true—you’ll often hear Japanese adults referring to their parents using honorific terms and children referring to their friend’s relatives using familiar terms.
Another major difference in comparison to most western languages is that there is no general term for brothers or sisters. You must always specify whether you are talking about an older or a younger sibling. The Japanese word for ‘brothers and sisters’ is 兄弟. When counting siblings in Japanese, you usually include yourself. For example, to say ‘I have three siblings.’ you would say 「四人兄弟です。」 You can find some of the other family-related terms below:
| neutral | honorific | |
| family | 家族 | ご家族 |
| relatives | 親戚 | ご親戚 |
| parent | 両親 | ご両親 |
| father | 父 | お父さん |
| mother | 母 | お母さん |
| older brother | 兄 | お兄さん |
| older sister | 姉 | お姉さん |
| younger brother | 弟 | 弟さん |
| younger sister | 妹 | 妹さん |
| uncle | 叔父 | 伯父さん |
| aunt | 叔母 | 伯母さん |
| cousin | いとこ | いとこさん |
| nephew | 甥 | 甥ごさん |
| niece | 姪 | 姪ごさん |
| grandfather | 祖父 | お祖父さん |
| grandmother | 祖母 | お祖母さん |
| husband | 夫 | ご主人 |
| wife | 妻 | 奥さん |
| son | 息子 | 息子さん |
| daughter | 娘 | お嬢さん |
| children | 子供 | お子さん |
| friend | 友達 | お友達 |
Counting people
In Japanese, people are counted using the counter 人, which when read alone is ひと, meaning “person”. The word for “one person”, also used for the word “alone”, is 一人. “Two people” is written 二人, “three people” 三人, and the pattern continues. The problem comes with how these are read. As with many counters, you will stumble upon a lot of irregularities, especially at the beginning of the list.
| one person | 一人 | ひとり |
| two people | 二人 | ふたり |
| three people | 三人 | さんにん |
| four people | 四人 | よにん |
| five people | 五人 | ごにん |
| six people | 六人 | ろくにん |
| seven people | 七人 | しちにん |
| eight people | 八人 | はちにん |
| nine people | 九人 | きゅうにん |
| ten people | 十人 | じゅうにん |
Let’s look at an example dialogue…
Notice how in this dialogue, when asking about Tom’s father’s name, Hikari used the honorific form of the word, as she was talking about someone else’s father, but Tom responded with the word 父, as he was referring to his own relative.
On the phone
A telephone number is called 電話番号, where 電話 means “phone” and 番号 “a series of digits”. Phone numbers are read digit by digit. The first 2-4 digits of a Japanese phone number are the area code and, when read, are followed by the particle の. Also, when giving a telephone number, Japanese usually lengthen the short vowels in 二 and 五 to give にい and ごう respectively. Here are some examples:
When they answer the phone, Japanese say もしもし, similarly to how we respond with “Hello?” Also, even when completely alone, some Japanese people tend to bow during the phone call despite the fact that their gesture can’t be seen by anyone but themselves.
Cultural note: Origins of “moshi moshi”
Historically, people used to say おいおい when answering the phone. However, that started to change in 1890 when operators switched over to saying もしもし, an abbreviation of the Japanese verb 申す, which in turn is a humble version of 言う (“to say”). Although there is no definite explanation of the reasons behind this change, several interesting theories exist that are worth exploring.
The first interpretation turns around foxes, common subjects of Japanese folklore. According to the legends, these animals have shapeshifting abilities and transform into beautiful women in order to trick young men into marrying them. In the earliest tales, such marriages did not always end badly:
“Ono, an inhabitant of Mino (says an ancient Japanese legend of A.D. 545), spent the seasons longing for his ideal of female beauty. He met her one evening on a vast moor and married her. Simultaneously with the birth of their son, Ono’s dog was delivered of a pup which as it grew up became more and more hostile to the lady of the moors. She begged her husband to kill it, but he refused. At last one day the dog attacked her so furiously that she lost courage, resumed vulpine shape, leaped over a fence and fled.
“You may be a fox,” Ono called after her, “but you are the mother of my son and I love you. Come back when you please; you will always be welcome.”
So every evening she stole back and slept in his arms.”
(Hamel, Frank. Human Animals: Werewolves & Other Transformations)
Because the fox returns to her husband each night as a woman but leaves each morning as a fox, she is called きつね (fox, 狐). In classical Japanese, kitsu-ne means “come and sleep”, and ki-tsune means “always comes”. Unfortunately, happy ends involving foxes became rarer and rarer with time and nowadays foxes have a pretty negative reputation.
So what does it all have to do with answering the phone? Well, according to the modern interpretations of the legend, a fox can not pronounce the word もし and thus when you hear someone say もしもし on the phone you can be certain that you are not being tricked by a cunning fox.
According to the second theory, it’s not foxes but ghosts (ようかい, 妖怪) who are behind it. Apparently, ghosts can only pronounce もし once, which is why it’s always repeated twice. If a ghost calls out to you with もし and you turn around to answer, it will steal your soul. Whether you believe these stories or not, better be safe and always answer the phone with もしもし!
Tokyo Story
Before you move on
- Practice saying your telephone number in Japanese (e.g., 電話番号は２３２の９６３です。)
- Open a telephone directory and try reading random numbers in Japanese. You may also try counting the number of entries with the same surname.
- Try and write out your own family tree in Japanese, using kanji where you can. Can you write your family members’ names in カタカナ too?
