聞く：カンナエの戦い

 This video is a documentary of the Battle of Cannae (カンナエの戦い), which was fought between the Romans and Carthaginians in 216 BC during the Second Punic War (218-201 BC). The narrator begins with a brief description of the war before the battle. It has not been going well for the Romans, so they decide to muster the largest army they have ever yet assembled to defeat the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, once and for all. However, Hannibal, despite being badly outnumbered, manages to annihilate the Roman army, creating a panic in Rome that the war is lost.



I realized I need to study kanji more; the subtitles, being full of unknown kanji, were hardly any help in understanding what the narrator was saying. However, thanks to them, I noticed something interesting about writing numbers. At the 2:05 minute mark, the narrator gives the sizes of both armies, and the Romans' 86,000 men is written onscreen as "8万６０００" where I suppose I would have expected, if kanji were to be used, "8万６千." This video also reminded me of a question I once asked ふせ先生; that is, why are 大軍 and 大艦隊 said instead of 大きい or 大きな艦隊? The answer then was that some words are just like that, I suppose, due to the poetic scale of what is being discussed (no one would say 大ピザ for instance).

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