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"I came second!"

There are many races and competitions happening everywhere and somebody asked me the other day, how can I say “I came second” in Japanese? So today, I will talk about that.

 

The counter for ranking is 位 (い ) and this sound does not change with numbers, so 2nd, 3rd, 4th… are ni-i, san-i, yon-i,… respectively.

 

So “I came second!” is either

二位になりました。or

二位でした。

 

If you came first, you can say “I won” in English, so in Japanese too you can say:

優勝(ゆうしょう)しました。

as well as

一位になりました。

 

Being second can be described in English as “runners-up” and in that case you can say:

準優勝(じゅんゆうしょう)しました。or

準優勝(じゅんゆうしょう)でした。

The former has more “happy” notion and the latter has more “disappointing” notion.

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