Counting money

Revision as of 09:24, 6 November 2013 by Mixue (talk | contribs) (→‎Examples)

Cash rules everything around us, and in China there's no exception. Mastering how to say quantities of money is vital!

Structure

Chinese has a specific structure for talking about quantities for money:

Number + 块 + Number + 毛

Examples

  • 3.8
  • 十块两毛 10.2
  • 九块五毛 9.5
  • 一块七毛 1.7
  • 五十块五毛 15.5
  • 七十二块四毛 72.4
  • 一百块五毛 100.5
  • 五百块三毛 500.3
  • 两千两百块两毛 2.000,2
  • 三千一百块一毛 3.100,1

If the smaller units are only in tens, you can just say the number of tens. So 3.86 RMB is "三 八"。而且这种说法一般只用于100以内的事。

  • Three kuai eight
  • 十块二Ten kuai two
  • 九块五Nine kuai five
  • 一块七One kuai seven
  • 五十块五Fifty kuai five
  • 七十二块四Seventy-two kuai four


The first number is the amount of whole RMB (or dollars etc.), and the second is the amount smaller units (e.g. cents). So 3.86 RMB is

  • 八 毛 六3.86



And if there's no smaller unit, e.g. 3 RMB, you can just say:

  • Three kuai

块 is the more common, informal way to talk about money. More formally you can use 元 in exactly the same way. This is similar to the difference between "dollars" and "bucks" in American English, or "pounds" and "quid" in British English. 块 is appropriate in more situations than "bucks" or "quid", though.

See also

Sources and further reading

Books