Technical Japanese

Well, there a quite a few words related to arithmetic, so here is a second post on the topic.

First the basic operations themselves:

加法 – かほう – Addition
減法 – げんぽう – Subtraction
乗法 – じょうほう – Multiplication
除法 – じょほう – Division

More details on addition:

被加数 – ひかすう – augend
加数 – かすう – addend
å’Œ – わ – sum

More details on subtraction:

被減数 – ひげんすう – minuend
減数 – げんすう – subtrahend
å·® – さ – difference

More details on multiplication:
被乗数 – ひじょうすう – multiplicand
ä¹—æ•° – じょうすう – multiplier
積 – せき – product

More details on division:
被除数 – ひじょすう – dividend
法 – ほう – divisor
商 – しょう – quotient
剰余 – じょうよ – remainder

Notice that augend, minuend, multiplicand, and dividend all begin with the kanji 被, in this case meaning receiving the action of the arithmetic operation. In a mostly unrelated aside, this is also the kanji used with 法, which means divisor, in:

法被 – はっぴ – happi

which is the short, brightly colored coat with a large symbol on the back often worn at festivals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happi After noticing this, I will certainly think of division every time I see someone wearing this coat. It’s always nice to have something else to remind you of math ^^;

Well, that’s quite a bit of vocabulary for one post, I will try to put some more sentences in the next one.

Relevant Links:
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/加法　
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/減法
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/乗法
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/除法

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