Counting money

Revision as of 06:21, 22 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
  • 10.2
  • 9.5
  • 1.7
  • 五 十 50.5
  • 七 十 二 72.4
  • 一 百 100.5
  • 五 百 500.3
  • 两 千 两 百 2000.2
  • 三 千 一 百 3100.1

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 3.8)
  • Ten kuai two 10.2)
  • Nine kuai five (9.5)
  • One kuai seven 1.7)
  • 五十 Fifty kuai five (50.5)
  • 七十二 Seventy-two kuai four (72.4)


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 (yuán) 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 (kuài) is appropriate in more situations than "bucks" or "quid", though.

See also

Sources and further reading

Books