Structure of numbers

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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.

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

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

Mandarin number structure

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

See also

Sources and further reading

Websites

Books

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