One of these numerals is a simple number; the other is what is known as an auxiliary numeral, a word as singular in form as in function.

Thus, for instance, "two men" become amplified verbally into "man two individual," or, as the Chinaman puts it, in pidgin English, "two piecey man." For in this respect Chinese resembles Japanese, though in very little else, and pidgin English is nothing but the literal translation of the Chinese idiom into Anglo-Saxon words.

The necessity for such elaborate qualification arises from the excessive simplicity of the Japanese nouns.

As we have seen, the noun is so indefinite a generality that simply to multiply it by a number cannot possibly produce any definite result.

No exact counterpart of these nouns exists in English, but some idea of the impossibility of the process may be got from our word "cattle," which, prolific though it may prove in fact, remains obstinately incapable of verbal multiplication.