Counting money
Chinese has a specific structure for talking about quantities for money:
Number + 块 + Number + 毛
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
- 三 块 八 十 六 毛
If the smaller units are only in tens, you can just say the number of tens. So 3.8 RMB is:
- 三 块 八
And if there's no smaller unit, e.g. 3 RMB, you can just say:
- 三 块
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
- A Practical Chinese Grammar For Foreigners (外国人实用汉语语法) (pp. 88 - 89) →buy
- Integrated Chinese: Level 1, Part 1 (pp. 233 - 234) →buy
