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East Asian age reckoning is a concept and practice that originated in China and is used in East Asian cultures. Several East Asian cultures, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolia, Taiwanese and Vietnamese, share this traditional way of counting a person's age, in which a person's age is counted starting from conception, rather than from physical birth. Newborns start at one year old, and each passing of a New Year, rather than the birthday, adds one year to the person's age; this results in people being between 1 and 2 years older in Asian reckoning than in the Western version. Today this system is commonly used in Koreans' daily lives, with the exception of the legal system and newspapers. In Eastern Outer Mongolia, age is traditionally determined based on the number of full moons since conception for girls, and the number of new moons since birth for boys. In China and Japan it is used for traditional fortune-telling or religion, and it is disappearing in daily life between peoples in the city.

[edit] Chinese

In either the traditional or modern age system, the word sui (traditional Chinese: 歲; simplified Chinese: 岁; pinyin: suì), meaning "years of age", is used for age counting. When a person's age is given in a publication, it is often specified whether that is his or her traditional age (traditional Chinese: 虛歲; simplified Chinese: 虚岁; pinyin: xūsuì) or modern age (traditional Chinese: 周歲; simplified Chinese: 周岁; pinyin: zhōusùi) or shisui (traditional Chinese: 實歲; simplified Chinese: 实岁; pinyin: shísùi).^{[original research?]}

In the traditional age system, a person is considered a year old at the time of birth, to account for the gestation period in the womb.^[1][2]

[edit] Japanese

Japanese uses the word sai (歳 or 才) as a counter word for both the traditional and modern age system.

The traditional system of age reckoning, or kazoedoshi (数え年), was rendered obsolete by law in 1902 when Japan officially adopted the Western system,^[3][4] known in Japanese as man nenrei (満年齢). However, the traditional system was still commonly used, so in 1950 another law was established to encourage people to use the Western system.^[5][6]

Today the traditional system is mainly used by the elderly. Elsewhere its use is limited to traditional ceremonies, divinations, and obituaries.^{[original research?]}

[edit] Korean

Koreans generally refer to their age in units called sal (살), using Korean numerals in ordinal form. Thus, a person is one sal during the first calendar year of life, and ten sal during the tenth calendar year.^[7]

The 100th-day anniversary of a baby is called baegil (백일), which literally means "a hundred days" in Korean, and is given a special celebration, marking the survival of what was once a period of high infant mortality. The first anniversary of birth named dol (돌)) is likewise celebrated, and given even greater significance. Koreans celebrate their birthdays,^[8] even though every Korean gains one year on New Year's Day.^[9] Because the first year comes at birth and the second on New Year's Day, a child born, for example, on December 29 will reach two years of age on January 1, when they are only three days old in western reckoning.^[10]

In modern Korea, the Western age system is referred to as "man-nai" (만나이) in which "man" (만) means "full"^[11] or "actual", and "nai" meaning "age".^[9][12] Though, the traditional system is most often used. For example, man yeol sal means "full ten years", or "ten years old" in English. The Korean word dol means "years elapsed", identical to the English "years old", but is only used to refer to the first few birthdays. Cheotdol or simply dol refers to the first Western-equivalent birthday, dudol refers to the second, and so on.^[13][14]

The birthday by the lunar calendar is called eumnyeok saeng-il (음력 생일, 陰曆生日) and yangnyeok saeng-il (양력 생일, 陽曆生日) is the birthday by Gregorian calendar.^[15]

For official government uses, documents, and legal procedures, the Western age system is used. Regulations regarding age limits on alcohol and tobacco use, as well as the age of consent, are all based on the Western system (man-nai).^[12][16]

[edit] See also

• Chinese calendar
• Japanese calendar
• Juche#Calendar—North Korea's calendar
• Minguo calendar—The Republic of China's calendar

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Japanese kazoedoshi counting^{[dead link]}