Lesson 13 - Numbers

The Chinese number system is actually a lot easier than the English one.  In fact, it almost reminds me of the Roman numeral system.  Let me list some numbers and you'll see what I mean:

一 (yi1) one

二 (er4) two

三 (san1) three

四 (si4) four

五 (wu3) five

六 (liu4) six

七 (qi1) seven

八 (ba1) eight

九 (jiu3) nine

十 (shi2) ten

As long as you know your numbers from 1 to 10, you can write out nearly every other number!  Here's how it works.

To write numbers 11-19, you just write the 十 followed by whatever digit you want for the ones place.  So 十七 would be 17 and 十二 would be 12.  Does that make sense?

For numbers that are multiples of 10 up to 90 (20, 30, 40...), you would put whatever tens digit you want followed by 十.  So 三十 would be 30 and 六十 would be 60.  Got that?

For all the other numbers from 21-99, you would combine the tens digit component (as seen right above) with the ones digit you want.  So 五十八 would be 58 and 四十一 would be 41.  It's very systematic.

The Chinese are very superstitious, and a lot has to do with the fact that if you change the tone of one word, it can mean a completely different one, whether good or bad.  For instance, if you change the tone for 四 from 4th to 3rd, it means death (死 si3).  So make sure to practice those tones!  For this reason, skyscrapers in China will very rarely have a 4th or 14th floor.  (How do you say 14 in Chinese again?)

I find that the best way to learn numbers in a new language is to just count as often as possible with the new numbers.  So for some practice, you can try counting the eggs (蛋 dan4) in the above pictures one at a time.  Happy learning!