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One of the sentences I found in an online paper and put into my Anki deck is

77年前【ねんまえ】、原爆【げんばく】はなぜ長崎【ながさき】に落【お】とされたのか？

Why was the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki 77 years ago?

How is 77 read?

If I google ななじゅうなな, I get "About 1.730.000.000 results"

and Tae Kim says, "七十七 （ななじゅうなな）= 77"

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/numbers.html

However, a google search for しちじゅうしち produces "About 1.010.000.000 results"

and there is a bank called

株式会社七十七銀行（しちじゅうしちぎんこう、英: The 77 Bank, Ltd.）

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/七十七銀行

Can I just pick my favorite? Does it matter?

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  • This is unrelated to your question but are you European? In most English-speaking areas, the comma and dot with numbers are reversed. 1.730 is a decimal (one point seven hundred and thirty), while 1,730 is a number in the thousands (one thousand seven hundred and thirty). I believe this is also true in Japan.
    – Angelos
    Nov 17, 2022 at 16:56
  • I am googling in Germany and just copied and pasted from the google result. You are quite right; I should have changed it to "1,730,000,000" instead.
    – Ned Reif
    Nov 17, 2022 at 17:42

1 Answer 1

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Both are fine. See the Wikipedia/77:

77（七十七、ななじゅうなな、ななじゅうしち、しちじゅうしち、ななそじあまりななつ）

Except ななそじあまりななつ, the other three could be used, but ななじゅうなな is the most common.

しち is more for specific combinations (7月, 7時, etc.) or sounds a little dated.

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  • I did not think to look up "77" on wikipedia! :D Thank you for the idea!
    – Ned Reif
    Nov 18, 2022 at 16:45

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