I am so desperately trying to get all my counting words correct, but I am sitting firmly on the struggle bus. Between pon, satsu, nin, hiki, and the like I just can’t keep them straight. Is there an easy way to remember them all? Or is there a way to easily practice when to use each word?
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easy? no. japanese has a lot of memorizing in it, and kanji and counters are unfortunately just part of it. they’re not totally foreign though, at some point you memorized that it’s a *pack* of wolves but a *flock* of birds and a *murder* of ravens, etc. counters are the same way. as with other things, put them in context and practice full sentences or even conversations that utilize things, reading writing speaking listening, for maximum contextual learning.
go ahead and look up the kanji for each counter and get an idea of what it roughly means and what else it’s part of, just to give it some context as well. definitely get off the romaji bus as reasonably quickly as you can, it makes learning conjugation harder, pronunciation harder, and it pushes back starting to learn kanji, which is a long road so the sooner the start the better.
There are about 120 counters in all, but only about 30 are essential. [The Wikipedia page has more information.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word)
Counters are classifications of things which fit a certain type.
本 – long, skinny things like pens, telephone poles, fingers and bottles
冊 – bound volumes, such as books, manga and magazines
人 – people
匹 – (generally) small animals and insects
The counters have a few regular conjugations. [The cheat sheets from NihonShock](https://cheatsheets.nihonshock.com) have a fairly thorough rundown.
This is a great question. Here’s a Tofugu guide I found helpful: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-counters-guide/
The thing to keep in mind is that each noun kind of gravitates to a counter (for example, you wouldn’t say “one sheet of coffee” in English), in a similar way to how a verb tends to gravitate toward a particle (for example, you wouldn’t say Aから読む).
Specifically, I’d recommend checking out the counter databases mentioned. If you want to know which counter to use, type in the noun you’re trying to count (like 犬), and it will tell you which counter to use (一匹).
It will become easier with practice and time. You’ll also see that, although hundreds of counters exist, they are not equally useful. Start off with the most useful counters then work your way from there.
It’s sounds to me like you should just move on at this point. You aren’t going to “all your counting words correct”, not even natives get them all “correct”. It’s better to treat counting words as something where you pick up a new word or new usage of an old word every now and then and gradually expands your knowledge about counting words.
Imagine what it is like to learn English, when everything except certain animals are pluralized with S, except sometimes ES, except sometimes they are not pluralized at all, kind of like those animals.
And there is a specific order for adjectives when they precede a noun, that follows a rule that all native speakers follow but do not even know they follow, and they do not even know there is a rule they are following!!
All that is just to say Japanese is remarkably simple in some things (no real pronouns, no plurals, no verb/subject agreement, no noun/adjective genders, no verb conjugations outside of completed aspect.
It does have Kanji, and it does have counters.
And natives have trouble with those as well, so no big deal. Once you start talking about a subject enough, you (like natives) will learn what the relevant counter is. And the Kanji for the thingｓ you are talking about.