Ways to count in Japanese

 In the Japanese language, there are several different ways to count things. It depends on the concept or the object you want to count and these ways of counting will depend for example on the shape or the size of an object.

A good example is the way we count people, something that a beginner in Japanese will often have to use in Japan, for example to ask for a place in a restaurant

If there are two people, we will say 二人

However, it isn't pronounced "ni nin" but "futari".

This way to count even changes if there is three people or more as we will say 三人.

Here, it is pronounced "Sannin". 

This is just an example and there are a lot of other ways to count in the Japanese language. As an other example for long and cylindrical objects we will use the kanji "本".