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According to people I've asked, and this page, if I pay 20 Australian dollars for my meal, it seems I say ni ju doru (20-ドル), and that ni ju-en doru (20-えん-ドル) would be ungrammatical - "dollar" acts as the counter.

Is it possible to refer to the Australian dollar as a noun in other circumstances (eg while talking about how the dollar fared on the exchange market)? If so, is this only because it's a loanword, or can the same apply with native Japanese words?

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    I think you meant to write ドル instead of ヅル ..
    – Lukman
    Sep 8, 2011 at 14:00
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    @Lukman: Thanks! イソターネット desu. :(
    – Andrew Grimm
    Sep 8, 2011 at 14:06
  • When discussing exchange rates etc., Yen (or any other currency) are commonly used as nouns. To answer the more general question of your title: there are several counters that are also nouns (本, 面, 人 etc.), though quite obviously they do not have the same exact meaning...
    – Dave
    Sep 8, 2011 at 16:50
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    I still don't understand why you have えん there.
    – user458
    Sep 10, 2011 at 14:49
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    No. That is not the problem. えん and ドル are both currencies. I don't see why you have two currencies. It is like saying '3 meter inch'.
    – user458
    Sep 10, 2011 at 15:19

2 Answers 2

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A quick Google search brought me to this Amazon page for a book with title 「強い円は日本の国益」, which is an example where the counter for Japanese Yen 円 is used as a noun to refer to the currency unit, thus I believe counter words for currencies can be used as nouns.

enter image description here

EDIT: StackExchange engine breaks the Amazon Japan link again so here are the raw URL (you need to copy-paste): http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%BC%B7%E3%81%84%E5%86%86%E3%81%AF%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E5%9B%BD%E7%9B%8A-%E6%A6%8A%E5%8E%9F-%E8%8B%B1%E8%B3%87/dp/4492395008

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    You are right that currency names can be used also as nouns. Example: 円を売ってドルを買う市場介入 (market intervention (by the Bank of Japan) to sell the yen and buy the dollar).
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Sep 8, 2011 at 15:54
  • I tried to fix the link to Amazon.co.jp by using this workaround, but I rolled it back because it did not seem to work. Sorry for the noise in the post history.
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Sep 8, 2011 at 16:13
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I think there are some coincidences, but for the most part I don't think you can just use a counter suffix as its own noun. Unless you're explicitly using it as the topic of a sentence to describe what the counter means.

For example, 匹【ひき】 (counter for animals) could not be used as a noun by itself...unless your sentence is 「『匹』とは小さな動物を数える助数詞です。」("Hiki" is a counter for counting small animals.

I previously said that there are some coincidences. For example, 一本【いっぽん】 means 1 cylindrical object. Now 本 by itself is a word -- "book". But you would never use it by itself in the context of a cylindrical object; only as a book.

Likewise, 〜頭【とう】 is used for counting "heads of animals" like cows, etc. (see posts HERE and HERE for discussions about which animals can be counted this way). 頭 by itself is あたま (or less frequently, かしら or こうべ) and means "head". But you would never use 頭 by itself in the context of "heads of animals".

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    It is correct that counter words usually cannot be used as nouns. Currencies are exceptions.
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Sep 8, 2011 at 15:55
  • @Tsuyoshi Ito - I'm just thinking off the top of my head here, but as a rough rule of thumb, do you think that counter words which take 大和言葉 numbers are mostly stand-alone nouns? The only exception that pops into my mind immediately is "一重".
    – rdb
    Sep 8, 2011 at 19:10
  • @rdb: I cannot think of many counter words that are 大和言葉, but you may be right. Looking at Wikipedia, 枝, 棹, and 手 are also used as nouns (I guess that the usage as a counter word comes after the usage as noun). (The list is not intended to be exhaustive.)
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Sep 8, 2011 at 19:42
  • @Tsuyoshi Ito - I meant to say that the numbers themselves were 大和言葉 (ひと、ふた、み、etc.), but now that I think about it, it's hard to come up with an example of ひと＋漢語　as a counter, so I guess it doesn't make much practical difference. BTW, this page has a pretty impressive listing for anyone who's interested: benricho.org/kazu/a.html
    – rdb
    Sep 8, 2011 at 19:56
  • @rdb: Sorry, I had misread your comment; but fortunately, as you said, it is not very different after all.
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Sep 8, 2011 at 19:59

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