Native Korean Numbers (why...)

I knew this day was coming, and that I would have to learn how to count again. Alas, here we are.

Korean has the two number systems, which I knew. I don’t know the full history of why there are two number systems, but it’s easier to conceptualize native Korean numbers as the tú form of numbers and that Sino-Korean numbers are the usted form of numbers. Sino-Korean is used for most “official” things and, given inflation-fueled development of South Korea in the 1970s, for sure anything that involves counting money. By comparison, the native Korean numbers are used for counting quantities of things (e.g. buying items from a store, counting things on the table), age, frequency/rates (e.g. how many times a day or week you do something), and hours of the day. It seems like there is a hard limit on how far this number system can go. By time it gets to 100, 백 comes in and (I think?) we’re reverting to Sino-Korean numbers from there.¹

I would ask why this system must be in place, but I’m the one that signed up to learn this language. It makes sense to them, so I have to make it make sense to me. Alrightie. Let’s do it.

There are some quirks to remember when counting an actual thing, but the actual number itself is fairly straightforward. For example, 열하나 (literally: 10+1) is 11. There will be irregularity to follow when actually counting something in particular, but I’ll get to that later in this post. For now, though, let’s do 20-90.

Notice that 70 and 90 start as 7 and 9 do. I wish there were any other kind of tell for the others, but there isn’t. You just have to memorize this stuff. Why…

Enter Unit Noun

Korean has a so-called “unit noun” in relation to counting various things. Its introduction into any given sentence also has implications for how you’ll communicate anything ending in 1, 2, 3, and 4, and 20. Naturally. Why not.

These unit nouns will likely get their own spin-off tab on this website, but for now, we learned the unit noun for various objects (개), people (명), animals (마리), cups [only when they’re filled with something] (잔), cans (갠, helpfully), bottles (병), books/book-adjacent things (권), paper/paper-adjacent things (장), and ages (살).

However, we now have weird wrinkles to think about in counting things. Let’s take a hypothetical question you might ask me in my office now to help me learn Korean. “How many pens are on the desk?” Remembering our prepositions, this question would be: “책상 위에 펜이 몇 개 있어요?” As a reminder to myself, literally: “desk, on (with location marker), pen (with subject marker), how many, unit noun for countable objects, are there/exists?” Depending on how I may want to count the number of writing utensils on my desk, the answers would be as follows:

In this context, it’s worth saying before continuing that the first half of these sentences is overkill. For example, “한 개 있어요” would be more than sufficient in this context to say that there is just one pen on the desk. Korean is very context-heavy in its application.

No matter, notice what happens to the numbers for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 20 when counting something specific. 하나 becomes 한, 둘 becomes 두, 셋 becomes 세, 넷 becomes 네, and 스물 becomes 스무. Note that this peculiarity for 20 is just for 20, and not 21, 22, and so on.