Jinrikisha Days in Japan
Dialects and localisms contribute still further to confusion of tongues. A hibachi in Kioto is a shibachi in Yokohama, as a Hirado vase is a Shirado one. When you inquire a price, you say ikura for “how much” in Yokohama, and nambo in Kioto. All around Tokio the g has the sound of ng, or gamma nasal, and this nasal tone of the capital is another point of conformity with the modern French.
Everywhere in Japan an infinity of names belongs to the simplest things. Twenty- five synonyms for rice are given in Hepburn’s smaller dictionary, all as different as possible. Rice in every stage of growing, and in every condition after harvesting, has a distinct name, with no root common to all. Endless mistakes follow any inexactness of pronunciation. The numerals, ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, ku, ju, are easily memorized, and learning to count up to one hundred is child’s play compared to the struggle with French numerals. It is not necessary to say “four times twenty, ten, and seven,” before ninety-seven is reckoned; that is simply ku ju shichi, or nine tens and a seven. Twenty is ni ju, thirty is san ju, fifty is go ju, and so through the list. The ordinal numbers have dai prefixed or ban added, and “fourth” is then yo ban. That ichi ban means “number one,” and ni ban, “number two,” surprises people who had supposed that Mr. Ichi Ban and Mr. Ni Ban owned the great Japanese stores that used to exist in two American cities. After learning the plain cardinal and ordinal numbers, the neophyte must remember to add the syllable shiki when mentioning any number of animals, nin for people, ken for houses, so for ships, cho for jinrikishas, hai for glasses or cups of any liquid, hon for long and round objects, mai for broad and flat ones, tsu for letters or papers, satsu for books, wa for bundles or birds. Any infraction of these rules gives another meaning to the intended phrase, and the slightest variation in inflection changes it quite as
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