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.
