Category talk:Japanese countable nouns

Category:Japanese collective nouns
Japanese doesn't have concept of countable/uncountable/collective noun. 片割れ靴下 (talk) 14:34, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
 * (I know no Japanese.) Not having a concept of them doesn't mean it doesn't have them. I mean: The fact that Japanese grammarians and grammar-school teachers don't divide nouns into these three categories doesn't mean that it's impossible to do so. Did you mean only (a) that it has no concept of them, or did you really mean (b) that the division is nonexistent, and the existing categorization into these categories of several entries is baseless nonsense? If you meant only (a) and are correct, then I think we should keep the categories; if you meant (b) and are correct, I think we should delete them. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 13:29, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

look

Open for 500 days. --Fytcha (talk) 05:17, 4 December 2021 (UTC)


 * No opinion. I'm not a grammar expert. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 00:20, 5 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I have never encountered the concept of uncountable nouns/collective nouns during my Japanese studies. I guess it's possible to do so but I don't see how it can be helpful to current and future learners. Shen233 (talk) 17:59, 5 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Some things are inherently without number even conceptually: "water" is one such. When talking about the substance, "one water" or  just doesn't make sense.  But even here, "water" in both English and Japanese can be counted, if one assumes the right conceptual context -- "[bodies of] water" or "[servings of] water".
 * That said, when asking about things that can have number, in Japanese, one uses the word, and when asking about things that have no number but do have amount, in Japanese, one uses the word . Japanese does have the concept of "countable" vs. "uncountable", but it is not really a feature of the language the way it is in English, not least as there is no grammatical number in Japanese (no plurals).
 * I mostly agree with here -- I don't think this is a very useful (or sensible) thing to categorize, not least as this isn't really a language-dependent feature, so much as a distinction of the things themselves -- and thus, it's not lexical information.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 19:56, 6 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree with Shen233 and Eiríkr that countable and uncountable are not sensible categories for Japanese. Japanese does not mark plural on nouns (or other word classes). Although, as Eiríkr suggests, the things to which words refer may be collective or individuated, that is not reflected in word classes or morphology. (By the way, slightly counter to Eiríkr's suggestion, one does hear things like 生一つ (nama, hitotsu, “one draft [beer]”) quite commonly. See also universal packager for a related concept in the philosophy of language.) Cnilep (talk) 23:40, 6 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Weak delete. Without a grammatical basis, the categorization of countable/uncountable/collective nouns is largely subjective and comes more close to a topic category, while the topic seems too broad and not very useful. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 07:20, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

RFD-deleted the countable and uncountable categories (amusingly, they both contained the same 2 entries). However, I'd like to see more discussion about the collective nouns category. do you have input on this? This, that and the other (talk) 03:08, 29 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I really don't understand the use case for having Category:Japanese collective nouns. For example,  could mean, or  -- there is no inherent number, so any Japanese noun could be collective.
 * Can anyone else come up with a compelling use for this category? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 18:35, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Evidently not. RFD-deleted. This, that and the other (talk) 09:20, 17 August 2023 (UTC)