Re: Cardinals and ordinals

Garth wrote:

>Nik Taylor wrote:
>>Garth Wallace wrote:
>>
>>>Isn't the count suffix "-ban" always required for ordinals?
>>
>>Not always.  For example, "chapter two" is _dainika_, World War One and
>>World War Two are, respectively, _daiichiji sekai taisen_ and _dainiji
>>sekai taisen_, literally "number-one-order world big-war" and
>>"number-two-order world big-war",
While "ji" as in "jyoji" does mean "order" or "sequence", I think
here it would be better to think Chinese. In Chinese, "ci4" (Japanese
"ji") indicates number of times (eg: Ta1 chang4le san3ci4.; She sang
three times.). So in this example, it would be "ordinal-one-time
world big war". Conversationally, when Japanese discusses "once",
"twice", "thrice", etc., it uses either "ichido, nido, sando..." or
"ikkai, nikai, sankai...", but I would consider the World War
terminology as fixed expressions on both sides of the Sea of Japan
and parse it the Chinese way.

>>The -ji in the WW1 and WW2 words can apparently be used without any
>>other affixes, too, my dictionary gives an example "niji shiken", "the
>>second examination"
Hence my interpretation "two-times test" or "second time test".

>Is this the same -ji used for telling time?
No, different kanji. Again, the first "ji", as in "jyoji", indicates
"order" but in some formulaic Sino-Japanese expressions "time" (cf.
French "fois", German "mal"), the countable variety ("If I've told
you once, I've told you a thousand times".) The second "ji", as in
"jikan" indicates "time", the uncountable variety ("Time flies") and
in Japanese, "hour" ("ichijikan han", "an hour and a half"). In the
telling time scenario, I would translate "ji" as "hour" here.

>>>Also, does "dai-" mean "great" here?
>>
>>No, different kanji.
"Ichibanme, nibanme, sanbanme, ...." could probably be considered the
default ordinal counting system, but the other, more precise ordinal
system(s) involve the ordinal prefix + number + count/measure word =
noun. Eg:

daiissoku no kutsu  the first pair of shoes
("soku" - the counter for shoes)
daiissatsu no hon  the first book
("satsu" - the counter for books)
daiikka  Lesson One
("ka" - lesson, chapter)
dainihyaku nen the two hundredth year
("nen" - year)
etc.

This is a Sino-Japanese construction.

Kou