Structure of numbers

Chinese handles numbers in a very consistent and logical way. The system does have some tricky parts, but once you've learnt it you will know how to read out any number in Chinese.

One to one hundred

Single digits are handled the same way as in English, nothing tricky there.

Eleven, twelve and the teens are handled very logically - they're formed with 十 followed by a digit 一 to 九. So eleven is 十一, twelve is 十二, thirteen is 十三 and so on up to nineteen, which is 十九.

All the tens are also formed very logically. Twenty is 二十, thirty is 三十 and so on. Units in the tens are simply added on the end. So twenty one is 二十一, thirty four is 三十四 and ninety nine is 九十九. All very logical and consistent. And one hundred is simply 一百, as in English.

So you now know how to count to one hundred in Chinese.

Zeros

As mentioned above, one hundred is 一百. One hundred and one is read out as if reading the digits 101: 一百零一, "One hundred zero one". Chinese uses zero, 零, in the way English uses and to separate out units in numbers. So English says "one hundred and one" whilst Chinese says "one hundred zero one".

In English, and is only said once per gap, and this is the same

More examples

Mandarin numbers examples

Digit	Chinese	English
1	一	one
10	十	ten
13	一三	thirteen
20	二十	twenty
21	二十一	twenty-one
99	九十九	ninety-nine
100	一百	one hundred
101	一百零一	one hundred and one

Chinese handles numbers in a slightly different way to English. The differences occur around different units in the two languages, and the way zeros are used when reading out numbers in Chinese.

Different units

Mandarin has two units that English doesn't have (or at least, it has unique words for these units whilst English describes them with combinations of other units. These are:

• 万 - ten thousand
• 亿 - hundred million

万 comes up the most often and is the largest stumbling block for most people learning Mandarin numbers. In English, numbers are usually broken up into chunks of three digits. Because of 万, it's easier to break numbers up into groups of four in Mandarin. For example:

• 12000

Would be split into 12 000 in English (chunks of three digits), and the English reading "twelve thousand" would become more obvious. Split it the Chinese way, 1 2000, and the Chinese reading "一万两千" (one wan and two thousand) becomes more obvious.

More examples:

Separating numbers

English split	English reading	Chinese split	Chinese
10 000	ten thousand	1 0000	一万
13 200	thirteen thousand two hundred	1 3200	一万三千两百
56 700	fifty six thousand seven hundred	5 6700	五万六千七百

Zeros

Mandarin number structure

亿	千万	百万	十万	万	千	百	十	一
One hundred millions	Ten millions	Millions	Hundred thousands	Ten thousands	Thousands	Hundreds	Tens	Ones

Sources and further reading

• East Asia Student: Mandarin numbers grammar summary