Lesson 13 · いくらですか — places, floors and prices
How much, and which floor
Lesson 6 taught you to ask いくら at a point when the course had no numbers to answer it with. Today it gets them — and they are counted in a unit English and Arabic do not have.
Two thirds of this page is a building you can walk through — rooms, stairs, floors, a shop. The last third is the part that will take the practice: three number words, two counters, and a way of grouping digits that does not line up with either language you already have.
About the kanji on this page
Thirty-seven characters appear in the 漢字 column and twenty-six are new; you have already met 一 会 何 国 大 家 手 教 新 社 電. Recognition only, as in lessons 10 to 12 — no stroke order, no writing practice, no kanji system, and the kana is still the form to learn. Four repeat, and 階 repeats three times, which is section 4's whole subject.
1.Two more rows of the same grid
The first eight words are not new shapes. They are the こ, そ and あ columns of two more rows of the こそあど grid — the one lesson 6 drew when it taught the ど column, and lesson 12 filled in two rows of.
The grid needs JavaScript. The same sets are laid out on the question-word reference sheet.
Four rows of the grid are now yours: れ and の from lesson 12, こ and ちら from today. Learn a row and you get four words; learn the three prefixes once and they never change again.
Trick 1 · The ちら row is the polite row of the whole grid
The lecture sheet writes “polite equivalent of ここ” beside each of the four ちら words and never says why. The why is that they ask a direction where the short ones ask a place, and gesturing at a direction is vaguer — therefore gentler — than pointing at a spot.
That is chapter 11's rule turning up for the third time: the polite form is longer, and it is less direct. だれ → どなた, いくつ → おいくつ, and now どこ → どちら.
Trick 2 · Arabic builds its place words from the same two pieces as yesterday
Lesson 12 found that Arabic marks its middle demonstrative with كاف الخطاب, the second-person you, and its far one by adding لام البعد on top: ذَا → ذَاكَ → ذٰلِكَ. The place words do it again, on a different stem:
- هُنَا — here. Bare.
- هُنَاكَ — there. Plus the you.
- هُنَالِكَ — over there. Plus the lām and the you, and en.wiktionary gives that etymology outright: ـكَ + لِ + هُنَا.
So both languages derive place from pointing by a regular operation — Japanese swaps the ending (これ → ここ), Arabic stacks two suffixes. Learn the operation once and you get a paradigm in each language.
2.One building, twelve words
Nothing here needs a trick — it is a floor plan. Two of the rooms share a character, and that is the only pattern worth pointing at.
| Japanese | What it is | Worth noticing |
|---|---|---|
| ロビー | lobby | Three beats — ビー is two. |
| うけつけ 受付 | reception | The desk, the department and the person, all one word. |
| きょうしつ 教室 | classroom | 教 is the one inside chapter 11's きょうし. |
| かいぎしつ 会議室 | conference room | Same 室 room as above. |
| じむしょ 事務所 | office | “Business-affairs place”. |
| しょくどう 食堂 | canteen | 食 eat + 堂 hall. |
| へや 部屋 | room | The plain word. Lesson 4 taught it as two kana. |
| かいだん 階段 | staircase | Literally floor steps — and that 階 is section 4. |
| ちか 地下 | basement | Where the food hall is, in every department store. |
Two words on the lecture sheet are mistyped
- ウイン is not a word. Wine is ワイン — ワ has been typed as ウ + イ. The sheet's own transliteration column says wain, so only the Japanese column is wrong. That makes this the first slip in the course that lands in the column you actually memorise, which is why it is flagged here rather than in a footnote.
- エレベータ should be エレベーター, with the final ー. The sheet keeps it on エスカレーター one row later, so this is a slip rather than a convention.
3.Japanese counts in fours
This is the part of the chapter that has to be understood rather than memorised. English and Arabic put a separator every three digits. Japanese groups every four.
How it is written — commas every three digits, in all three languages
100,000,000
English and Arabic read straight off this line: hundred · million
Where the Japanese words break — every four digits
1,0000,0000
read off this line instead: いちおく 一億
Put side by side, the question is simply which numbers does each language have a single word for:
| Number | English | Arabic | Japanese |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | hundred | مِئَة | ひゃく 百 |
| 1,000 | thousand | أَلْف | せん 千 |
| 10,000 | ten thousand | عَشَرَةُ آلَافٍ | まん 万 |
| 1,000,000 | million | مِلْيُون | ひゃくまん 百万 |
| 100,000,000 | hundred million | مِئَةُ مِلْيُونٍ | おく 億 |
Italic means the language has no word of its own and builds one out of smaller pieces. Read down the columns: English and Arabic go up in threes and have to spell out 10,000; Japanese goes up in fours and has to spell out 1,000,000. Neither is stranger than the other — but you have to switch.
Trick 3 · まん is a column, not a word — so it is never said alone
Ten thousand is いちまん, never まん. From 万 upward a number takes its 一 when nothing else precedes it, where 百 and 千 stand bare — ひゃく and せん are fine on their own.
The reliable test: if you can say it in English without the word one, Japanese probably needs the 一. And Arabic agrees with English here — أَلْف stands alone too. This is the one place the two languages you have both diverge from the one you are learning.
4.The sounds that collide
Numbers meeting counters change shape. Nobody chose these; they are what happens when the consonants meet. Only the marked cells differ from the predictable form.
| With | 3 | 6 | 8 | What? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 百 | さんびゃく | ろっぴゃく | はっぴゃく | なんびゃく |
| 千 | さんぜん | ろくせん regular | はっせん | なんぜん |
| 階 | さんがい | ろっかい | はっかい | なんがい |
Two things are worth taking from that table rather than memorising it whole. Six and eight double the consonant — ろっ, はっ — which is the small っ lesson 7 taught, doing a job. And three voices what follows it: ひゃく → びゃく, せん → ぜん, かい → がい. That is the tenten from lesson 5, appearing as a sound rule rather than a spelling one.
Trick 4 · The question word tells you the rule
The lecture sheet lists なんがい — what floor — as its own row, voiced. It does not list さんがい anywhere. But なんがい is proof enough: if the question word voices, the counter voices, and 3階 is さんがい.
Same trick reads the brackets on the sheet's own 〜かい（〜がい） row. That parenthesis is not an alternative pronunciation — it is the entire sound change, compressed into one cell.
5.The walk
All forty-one words, in four scenes, each word in exactly one of them. Like lesson 12's this is a place rather than a story — but this one climbs: the entrance, up through the floors, the shop, the till. Read it through once. Then press Hide on a scene and say the Japanese from the English.
The walk is rendered from assets/story13-data.js and needs
JavaScript. Every word it contains is also on a card in section 6 below.
6.Forty-one words
Grouped the way the walk moves through them. Wrong answers in the drill come from inside a group, so the hard calls are the real ones: きょうしつ against かいぎしつ, こちら against そちら, and the three units against each other.
The word cards need JavaScript. Every word on them appears in the walk above.
Drill them for meaning
The drill needs JavaScript. Every word it asks about is in the list above.
7.Buying something
Four sentences carry the whole transaction. The frame is the one you have — 〜は 〜です with lesson 6's か — plus today's numbers.
これは いくらですか。
| Japanese | English |
|---|---|
| これは いくらですか。 | How much is this? |
| さんぜんえんです。 | It's 3,000 yen. |
| くつうりばは なんがいですか。 | What floor is the shoe department on? |
| ごかいで ございます。 | It's on the fifth floor. |
Trick 5 · でございます comes at you, not from you
The last line is the shop assistant's, and it is です one storey higher — the sheet glosses it only as “polite equivalent of です”. Staff say it to customers; the customer does not say it back.
Chapter 11 established that Japanese politeness is directional — it points away from the speaker. せんせい about others and きょうし about yourself was the first case, おくに on this page is the second, and this is the third. You will hear でございます far more often than you will ever need to say it.
Three set phrases finish the exchange, in the order they are spoken.
-
1.Excuse me — said to open, not to apologise.
Japaneseすみません。
sumimasen
Arabicلَوْ سَمَحْتَ.
law samaḥta
-
2.Please show me that one.
Japaneseそれを みせて ください。
sore o misete kudasai
Arabicأَرِنِي ذَاكَ، مِنْ فَضْلِكَ.
arinī dhāka, min faḍlika
-
3.Right — I'll take it.
Japaneseじゃ、それを ください。
ja, sore o kudasai
Arabicإِذَنْ، أَعْطِنِي ذَاكَ مِنْ فَضْلِكَ.
idhan, aʿṭinī dhāka min faḍlika
Learn these two as shapes, not as grammar
Both requests contain something this course has not taught and is not teaching today. The を marks what the verb is done to, and みせて is a conjugated form of みせる. Take the whole phrase as one block — swap only the word in front of を — exactly as chapter 11 handled 〜から きました and chapter 12 handled これから おせわに なります.
ください on its own asks for a thing; みせて ください asks for an action. That difference is the entire reason one of them carries the extra word.
8.Sources
- Japanese numerals — read this one if you read only one. It is the source for grouping into myriads rather than thousands, for why 10,000 must be いちまん, and for the multiplication table behind section 4's sound changes. Myriad gives the wider picture: China, Korea, Japan and ancient Greek all count this way.
- Japanese counter words for the 階 table — いっかい, さんがい, ろっかい, はっかい, なんがい — and for the general k- and h- sound-change rules that section 4 is an instance of. It notes that not every speaker observes さんがい over さんかい.
- Jisho.org, serving JMdict/EDICT — every reading and commonness tag here, and the check that caught both of the lecture sheet's slips. It is also where ちか turns out to be 地下 underground and 地価 the price of land, both common.
- هنالك for the etymology behind Trick 2 — ـكَ + لِ + هُنَا — and ألف for the Arabic side of section 3, including a million as أَلْف أَلْف, a thousand thousands.
- Minna no Nihongo I, 3A Corporation. This chapter's word list is that textbook's lesson 3, word for word — the lecture sheet says so in its own heading.
- Question-word sheet — the full こそあど grid, of which this chapter fills in the last two everyday rows. Lesson 12 is where the other two came from, and where Trick 2's Arabic pattern was first found.