Learning Chinese - Numbers

Backstory: At the beginning of this year I thought that I need to do something that will distract my mind from coding, so learning a totally different language seemed like the perfect thing. After doing some research about different languages and cultures, I decided to go with Chinese (Mandarin).

I started with numbers because this seems to be one of the easiest things in Chinese and I needed something to boost my confidence when I started! So, let’s start counting!

Number	Chinese	Pinyin
0	零	Líng
1	一	Yī
2	二	Èr
3	三	Sān
4	四	Sì
5	五	Wǔ
6	六	Liù
7	七	Qī
8	八	Bā
9	九	Jiǔ
10	十	Shí
100	一百	Yī bǎi
1000	一千	Yī qiān
10000	一万	Yī wàn

(Pinyin is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China and to some extent in Taiwan)

These are the basic numbers, everything else is a combination of all these. For example, if you want to say 81 that’s 八十一, which is really easy compared to other languages, no need to remember any other words or to do any math (quatre-vingt-un).

Same thing happens with numbers above 100, for example, 345 is 三百四十五.

The first ten numbers at the beginning of each hundred (excluding the first one), like 101-109, 201-209 etc., contain also the zero. For example, 305 is 三百零五.

To simplify things, Chinese tend to not pronounce the “ten”(十) in numbers like 110, 120,…,210, 220 etc. So, 140 is usually 一百四, not 一百四十. Although, it is not incorrect if you pronounce it as the latter.

An important thing to mention is that, in Chinese, there are two words describing the number two: 二(èr) and 两(liǎng). The first one is more used when counting, the second one is used when you want to measure something (for example, two cats - 两只猫).

FUN FACT: If you want to insult someone in Chinese, tell them they are a 250 (二百五).