- there is no distinction between singular and plural forms of nouns
- there is no distinction between many/few and much/little
- no full nouns may occur with numerals alone
- there is no indefinite article
All Japanese nouns resemble English mass nouns in requiring a classifier (also known
as a measure word) to intervene between a numeral and the noun itself. Just as
English has two clouds of smoke, so Japanese has what may be literally rendered as
two pieces of horse: