this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
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[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hey, now, you're both right - the Japanese language doesn't distinguish between singular and plural.

[–] comrademiao@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

lol that's not true at all dog

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Please explain how that's wrong?

Japanese nouns don't have grammatical number. The closest you can get is adding an affix like -tachi, but even then it's almost exclusively for people and means more like "and company" rather than a true plural.

The noun for "city" is 市 ("ichi"), and it can mean either one city, two cities, or many cities. You can specify how many by adding a number, but the word itself doesn't change.