When it comes to numerals, three systems are used among Chinese speakers. Besides the widely-used system of Arabic numerals, two indigenous systems are also used in China. What are they, and how do they differ from English numerals? This guide will explain the Chinese numbers and the Pinyin for them.
Three Numeral Systems in the Chinese Language
As the most common system to denote numbers, the Arabic numeral system is naturally adopted in China. For convenience, many people and organizations use the Arabic or mixed Arabic-Chinese system, making the Arabic numerals a prevailing approach to represent numbers.
However, when it comes to certain financial or commercial occasions, such as writing amounts on banknotes, cheques, etc., people conventionally stick to traditional Chinese numerals with less room for data falsification. As a more popular indigenous system in China, the traditional Chinese numeral system is based on Chinese characters, which are also used by other languages within the Chinese cultural sphere, including Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
Besides the two abovementioned numeral systems, there was another indigenous numeral system worth mentioning – the Suzhou numerals or 蘇州碼子. This numeral system is considered the only surviving form of rod numerals. It was once used by ancient Chinese mathematicians and later adopted and widely used by merchants in Chinese markets before the introduction of the Arabic numerals.
In China, three written numeral systems used to coexist until the 1990s, when Arabic numerals gradually replaced the Suzhou numerals. Strictly speaking, only the former two numeral systems are used in China these days.
English Numeral | Arabic Numeral | Chinese Numeral | Suzhou Numeral | |
Financial (T/S) | Normal | |||
zero | 0 | 零 | 零 | 〇 |
one | 1 | 壹 | 一 | 〡 |
two | 2 | 貳/贰 | 二 | 〢 |
three | 3 | 參/参 | 三 | 〣 |
four | 4 | 肆 | 四 | 〤 |
five | 5 | 伍 | 五 | 〥 |
six | 6 | 陸/陆 | 六 | 〦 |
seven | 7 | 柒 | 七 | 〧 |
eight | 8 | 捌 | 八 | 〨 |
nine | 9 | 玖 | 九 | 〩 |
ten | 10 | 拾 | 十 | 十 |
Chinese Numbers are Denoted with Characters
Numbers has always been something people struggle with when translating between languages. But the truth is, anyone can get his head around Chinese numbers once he gets the hang of their uses and idiosyncrasies.
Even though almost all Chinese numbers are one syllable long with a logical counting system, translating the higher Chinese numbers can confuse inexperienced translators accustomed to Western languages.
The lower Chinese numbers are straightforward, like English numerals and many other languages. You only need to know ten characters to count from 1 to 10 in Chinese. To count from 11 to 20, you will need to know another 10 English words, yet no new Chinese character is needed to introduce in this process. That’s where Chinese and English diverge in this respect.
How to Translate Numbers from English to Chinese?
Chinese numerals follow the rules to recombine the same characters used for one to ten to cover all the numbers from 11 to 99.
By comparing the characters and pinyin of Chinese numbers from 1 to 10 with that of higher numbers, you will realize the Chinese language reincorporates characters used for specific numbers to represent all Chinese numbers.
Once you grasp the logic behind the Chinese numbers from 1 to 20, you can quickly expand the same characters to count to 99 by default. When it comes to high numbers like one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, and one hundred million, you only need to respectively introduce the new characters “百” “千” “万”, and “亿”. With this rule in mind, it’s easy to count Chinese numbers from 1 to 100, and even to 10,000 or higher numbers.
English Numeral | Chinese Numeral | Pinyin | Literal English Translation |
zero | 零 | líng | zero |
one | 一 | yī | one |
two | 二 | ér | two |
three | 三 | sān | three |
four | 四 | sì | four |
five | 五 | wǔ | five |
six | 六 | liù | six |
seven | 七 | qī | seven |
eight | 八 | bā | eight |
nine | 九 | jiǔ | nine |
ten | 十 | shí | ten |
eleven | 十一 | shí yī | ten one |
twelve | 十二 | shí ér | ten two |
thirteen | 十三 | shí sān | ten three |
fourteen | 十四 | shí sì | ten four |
fifteen | 十五 | shí wǔ | ten five |
sixteen | 十六 | shí liù | ten six |
seventeen | 十七 | shí qī | ten seven |
eighteen | 十八 | shí bā | ten eight |
nineteen | 十九 | shí jiǔ | ten nine |
twenty | 二十 | ér shí | two ten |
twenty one | 二十一 | ér shí yī | two ten one |
twenty two | 二十二 | ér shí ér | two ten two |
twenty three | 二十三 | ér shí sān | two ten three |
twenty four | 二十四 | ér shí sì | two ten four |
twenty five | 二十五 | ér shí wǔ | two ten five |
… | … | … | … |
one hundred | 一百 | yī bǎi | one hundred |
one hundred and one | 一百零一 | yī bǎi líng yī | one hundred zero one |
one hundred and eight | 一百零八 | yī bǎi líng bā | one hundred zero eight |
one thousand | 一千 | yī qiān | one thousand |
two thousand and nineteen | 二千零十九 | ér qiān líng shí jiǔ | two thousand zero ten nine |
ten thousand | 一万 | yī wàn | one “wan”* |
one million | 一百万 | yī bǎi wàn | one hundred wan |
ten million | 一千万 | yī qiān wàn | one thousand wan |
one hundred million | 一亿 | yī yì | one “yi”* |
billion | 十亿 | shí yì | ten yi |
thousands of | 成千上万的 | chéng qiān shàng wàn de | Amounting to thousands and approaching ten thousands |
millions of | 无数的 | wú shù de | Countless |
Conclusion
Chinese numbers are easy to master, with pinyin indicating their pronunciations. However, translating numbers is much more intricate than counting numbers, which is considered one of the critical elements in localization. When translating numbers into Mandarin Chinese or any other language, it’s crucially important to take cultural knowledge into account. A surefire way to get locale-specific translations accurate is to employ in-country native linguists native to the target language.
If you need such assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact Wordspath, a professional language service provider that has enabled seamless communication between people worldwide.
