What are the essential Japanese counter words?

For example -dai for machines, -mai for papers and stuff like that.

  * What else to expect/know? 

Thank you
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2011-05-31T19:19:07.113
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2012-11-04T02:13:05.913
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numbers suffixes counters
List of Japanese counter words
The [article at Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word)
covers the common ones as well as a decent number of extended ones, and lists
the exceptions for days, people, etc. as well as rendaku and number word
changes (e.g. 300->san*bya*ku, 4:00-> *yo*ji).
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2011-05-31T19:23:50.853
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2011-05-31T19:23:50.853
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There are entire dictionaries for this (数え方の辞典).
[Here's](http://www.hyou.net/ka/kazoekata.htm) a link to a whole bunch. 個 (ko)
is the most commonly used one. Japanese people use it often even with words
that should have a special counter if it's a less-often used one. It can
sometimes be annoying even for them to think of the proper 数詞! Here are most
common ones I can think of:

  * 人 (nin) for people
  * 名（様）[mei sama] for people, used when referring to number of customers at restaurants, etc.
  * 本 (hon) for long skinny stuff (pencils, pillars)
  * 冊 (satu) for bound stuff (books, magazines)
  * 枚 (mai) for flat stuff (paper, cds、shirts)
  * 台 (dai) for machines like cars and computers
  * 匹 (hiki) for most animals (four legged, insects, fish, etc.) 
    * For some other animals:
    * 頭 (tou) for cattle
    * 羽 (wa) for birds and sometimes rabbits
  * 回、度(kai, do) for number of times an action occurs
  * 隻 (sen) for big ships

Etc. The list goes on. I happened to live near a harbor so the last one was
useful for me (though it was still often substituted with 個!). You can just
learn the few most common ones and use 個 for everything else, learning the
less common ones as you go.
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2011-05-31T19:31:54.007
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