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This paper focuses on the readings of numerals in the appendices of the 1998 and 2016 editions of the NHK Japanese Pronunciation Accent Dictionary. This paper compares the two dictionaries and examines what changes can be seen in the 18 years between the revisions. First, he aspect of change can be divided into two main patterns: morphological change and word-class alternation.With regard to morphological change, alternations between the prompulsive and non-prompulsive forms are observed in 1, 6, 8, and 10. These numerals are considered to be natural changes since they are prone to prompting due to environmental factors. However, there are a few instances of non-prompted forms not prompting even in environments where they are prone to prompting. One possible reason for this is that the trend toward “simplification”, which is cited as a trend in the reading of numerals in the 2016 edition, is also evident in morphology. As for word alternations, a trend toward “simplification” is also evident, with a shift from Japanese to Chinese readings. This is particularly evident in the numerals 3 and following. However, when the readings of numerals 1 and 2 are checked, it is difficult to say that the Japanese readings are in decline. As for the characteristics of the particles of numerals 1 and 2 that take the Japanese reading, the morphological characteristic of being isomorphic to a noun and the semantic characteristic of having “cohesiveness” could be identified. This suggests that when we simply count individual things or use units of measurement, we count 1 and 2 with the Chinese reading “ichi, ni,” but when we consider a thing as a group or an individual with a sense of cohesion in the background, we tend to read them as “hito, futa.”