Numbers 1-10 (comparing Korean, Japanese, and Chinese)

I’ve noticed a lot of people have been studying “The Big Three” Asian languages simultaneously or consecutively, which is great! But it can get confusing. So I decided to make this post to help relate the languages to one another to ease the learning process a bit. I learned the languages in order: Korean, Japanese, Chinese. Korean helped me with some of the Japanese pronunciation, both with some numbers being the same, and the [l/r] sound English just doesn’t have. And then when I started learning Chinese, knowing the kanji from Japanese helped me remember the number characters, and Korean helped me remember some of the pronunciation.

Disclaimers:

• Korean does use 2 counting systems, but I’ll only be showing Sino-Korean in this lesson
• I don’t use romanization, but since this includes languages other people may still be learning/want to learn, I have included it here

1. 일 (il) 一 (ichi) 一 (yí)
2. 이 (ee) 二 (ni) 二 (èr)
3. 삼 (sam) 三 (san) 三 (sān)
4. 사 (sa) 四 (yon/shi) 四 (sì)
5. 오 (oh) 五 (go) 五 (wǔ)
6. 육 (yook) 六 (roku) 六 (liù)
7. 칠 (chil) 七 (nana) 七 (qī)
8. 팔 (pal) 八 (hachi) 八 (bā)
9. 구 (goo) 九 (kyu) 九 (jiǔ)
10. 십 (shib) 十 (juu) 十 (shí)