Japanese etymology: Why we count animals the way we do

The way animals are counted in Japanese may seem random: Dogs, cats, mice, bugs, etc. = 1匹、2匹、3匹 I-piki, ni-hiki, sanbiki… Elephants, lions, horses, etc. = 1頭、2頭、3頭 I-tou, ni-tou, san-tou… Birds and butterflies = 1羽、2羽、3羽 Ichiwa, niwa, sanwa… And then there are rabbits = 1羽、2羽、3羽 Ichiwa, niwa, sanwa… WHY 😂!? Biological classifications of animals came much later than language did. Instead of classifying animals into mammals, birds, etc., Japanese people seem to have counted them based on how they often looked from the human perspective. Animals that are smaller than humans tend to run when people approach them. One theory is that a kanji character that represents animal butt 匹 (hiki) was assigned to small animals because humans saw them from behind most often. Bigger animals were counted by their heads 頭 (tou) because they didn’t run. Big animals that faced us were rather threatening. In line with this logic, a theory as to why rabbits are counted the same way birds and butterflies are is that their most prominent features are their wing-like ears. So learning Japanese may not be a cumbersome memorization marathon after all. It’s the looks 😁! Hi, I’m Kyota, the author of Amazon Best Sellers [Folk Tales of Japan] and [Underdogs of Japanese History]. Please check out my books at ☺️: