A1
Numbers
How Chinese builds numbers from ten characters, why 二 and 兩 are both “two”, and the unit English does not have that makes large numbers hard.
一二三四五六七八九十. Everything up to a hundred is built out of those, and the construction is perfectly regular — more so than English, which has to teach eleven, twelve and thirteen separately.
十五
shíwǔ
fifteen — ten five
二十
èrshí
twenty — two ten
三十二
sānshí’èr
thirty-two — three ten two
The pattern is: what comes before 十 multiplies it, what comes after adds to it. So 九十九 is ninety-nine and there is nothing else to learn below a hundred.
二 and 兩 are both “two”
This one catches everyone. 二 is the number as a number — counting, reading out digits, forming larger numbers. 兩 is two of something, and it is what goes before a measure word.
兩個人
liǎng ge rén
two people
十二個人
shí’èr ge rén
twelve people
二個人
兩個人
Standing alone in front of a measure word, two is 兩. Inside a larger number it stays 二 — which is why 十二個人 above is correct.
兩 also does the work for two hundred and two thousand: 兩百, 兩千. Both 二百 and 兩百 are heard, and 兩百 is safer.
Hundreds, thousands, and the one that hurts
百 is a hundred, 千 a thousand. Then Chinese does something English does not: it has a single unit for ten thousand, 萬, and counts in those rather than in thousands.
一百
yì bǎi
one hundred
一千
yì qiān
one thousand
一萬
yí wàn
ten thousand
十萬
shí wàn
a hundred thousand — ten 萬
There is no shortcut here. English groups digits in threes and Chinese in fours, so converting anything above ten thousand means regrouping rather than translating, and it stays slow for a long time. 一百萬 is a million — a hundred 萬s.
Zero, and gaps inside a number
零 fills a gap where a place is empty, and only one 零 appears however many places are skipped.
一百零五
yì bǎi líng wǔ
one hundred and five
二零二六年
èr líng èr liù nián
the year 2026
Years are read digit by digit, not as a number — 2026 is two zero two six, never twenty twenty-six. The same goes for phone numbers, where 一 is usually said yāo to keep it from sounding like 七.
The tone on 一
一 is first tone alone and when reading digits, second tone (yí) before a fourth tone, and fourth tone (yì) before everything else. Nobody teaches this explicitly and everyone acquires it: 一個 yí ge, 一本 yì běn, 一 yī.