Arabic · al-ʿarabiyya · Arabic script, right to left
Numbers in Arabic from ṣifr to a million: digits and gender polarity
Numbers in Arabic are wāḥid, iṯnān, ṯalāṯa, arbaʿa, ḫamsa, sitta, sabʿa, ṯamāniya, tisʿa and ʿašara, written with the Eastern Arabic digits in much of the Middle East. From three to ten the number takes the opposite gender of the noun it counts, and above twenty the units come before the tens.
Arabic numbers from 0 to a million
The number words in their masculine counting form, with the Eastern Arabic digit in the last column. IPA from Wiktionary; transliteration in this site's scheme, where â marks the feminine ending tāʾ marbūṭa. The second form under two is a common spelling with hamza, used in this site's counting table.
| English | Arabic | IPA | Transliteration | Digit | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0zero | صفر | /sˤifr/ | ṣifr | ٠ | origin of cipher and zero |
| 1one | واحد | /waː.ħid/ | wāḥid | ١ | an adjective; follows the noun |
| 2two | اثنانإثنان | /iθ.naːn/ | iṯnān | ٢ | iṯnayn in the oblique cases |
| 3three | ثلاثة | /θa.laː.θa/ | ṯalāṯâ | ٣ | 3 to 10: opposite gender |
| 4four | أربعة | /ʔar.ba.ʕa/ | arbaʿâ | ٤ | |
| 5five | خمسة | /xam.sa/ | ḫamsâ | ٥ | |
| 6six | ستة | /sit.ta/ | sittâ | ٦ | |
| 7seven | سبعة | /sab.ʕa/ | sabʿâ | ٧ | |
| 8eight | ثمانية | /θa.maː.ni.ja/ | ṯamāniyâ | ٨ | |
| 9nine | تسعة | /tis.ʕa/ | tisʿâ | ٩ | |
| 10ten | عشرة | /ʕa.ʃa.ra/ | ʿašarâ | ١٠ | |
| 11eleven | أحد عشر | /ʔa.ħa.da ʕa.ʃa.ra/ | aḥada ʿašar | ١١ | 11 to 19: invariable for case |
| 12twelve | اثنا عشر | /iθ.naː ʕa.ʃa.ra/ | iṯnā ʿašar | ١٢ | |
| 20twenty | عشرون | /ʕiʃ.ruː.na/ | ʿišrūn | ٢٠ | plural of ten |
| 21twenty-one | واحد وعشرون | wāḥid wa-ʿišrūn | ٢١ | one and twenty | |
| 30thirty | ثلاثون | /θa.laː.θuː.na/ | ṯalāṯūn | ٣٠ | |
| 100a hundred | مئةمائة | /mi.ʔa/ | miʾâ | ١٠٠ | two spellings, one pronunciation |
| 200two hundred | مئتان | /mi.ʔa.taːn/ | miʾatān | ٢٠٠ | dual of miʾa |
| 1,000a thousand | ألف | /ʔalf/ | alf | ١٠٠٠ | |
| 2,000two thousand | ألفان | /ʔal.faːn/ | alfān | ٢٠٠٠ | dual of alf |
| 1,000,000a million | مليون | /mil.juːn/ | milyūn | ١٠٠٠٠٠٠ |
Digits are written left to right inside right-to-left text: the digits for 21 in the table put the tens digit on the left.
One and two agree, three to ten take the opposite gender
Arabic numbers are known for their grammar, and English Wikipedia's article on Arabic grammar is blunt about it: numbers behave in a very complicated fashion. The first two are simple. Wāḥid, one, and iṯnān, two, are adjectives. They follow the noun and agree with it in gender, so one man and one woman take different forms of the number, as nouns and adjectives do everywhere in Arabic.
From three to ten the rule turns round. The article calls it polarity: a feminine noun takes the masculine form of the number, and a masculine noun the feminine form, the one ending in tāʾ marbūṭa. Three girls is ṯalāṯu fatayātin, with the short masculine ṯalāṯ, because fatāt, girl, is feminine; three men take ṯalāṯatu with the feminine ending. The counted noun follows in the genitive plural.
Eleven to nineteen change the pattern again. The noun after them stands in the accusative singular, the numbers themselves do not change for case except twelve, and the ʿašar part now agrees with the noun's gender. From twenty upwards the tens, the hundreds and the thousands behave like nouns, take no gender agreement and govern a noun in a fixed case: the accusative singular after twenty to ninety-nine, the genitive singular after a hundred and above.
Units before tens, and the word wa
Compound numbers from 21 to 99 put the unit first and join the tens with wa-, and: wāḥid wa-ʿišrūn, one and twenty; ṯalāṯa wa-ʿišrūn, three and twenty. The tens are formed like masculine plurals from the units, ʿišrūn from ten, ṯalāṯūn from three, arbaʿūn from four, as the grammar article lists them.
Hundreds and thousands use the dual and the plural. Two hundred is miʾatān and two thousand alfān, both with the dual ending. Three thousand is ṯalāṯatu ālāfin, with alf in the plural, while three hundred is ṯalāṯu miʾatin, because miʾa has no plural in this use. Miʾa has two spellings, with and without an extra alif after the mīm, shown in the counting table; both are read the same.
The article gives a full example, 2,912 years, in two forms. Formally it is alfāni wa-tisʿu miʾatin wa-ṯnatā ʿašrata sanatan; in speech it shrinks to alfayn wa-tisʿ mīya wa-ṯnaʿšar sana. The same article adds that the formal system is hardly ever used aloud: large numbers are written as digits and read in a simplified way even by news announcers, often with local dialect pronunciations.
Ordinal numbers in Arabic
Ordinals from the second to the tenth are built on the root of the number; first has its own word. The masculine forms with the article follow the CLDR ordinal rules for Arabic, the feminine first from the same rules.
| Arabic | Transliteration | English |
|---|---|---|
| الأول | al-awwal | the first (masculine) |
| الأولى | al-ūlá | the first (feminine) |
| الثاني | aṯ-ṯānī | the second |
| الثالث | aṯ-ṯāliṯ | the third |
| الرابع | ar-rābiʿ | the fourth |
| الخامس | al-ḫāmis | the fifth |
| السادس | as-sādis | the sixth |
| السابع | as-sābiʿ | the seventh |
| الثامن | aṯ-ṯāmin | the eighth |
| التاسع | at-tāsiʿ | the ninth |
| العاشر | al-ʿāšir | the tenth |
Eastern Arabic digits and Western digits
Arabic is written with two sets of digits. The Eastern Arabic numerals, shown in the last column of the counting table, are the ones used with Arabic script in the east of the Arab world, the Mashriq, according to English Wikipedia. In Arabic they are called arqām mašriqiyya, eastern numerals, or arqām hindiyya, Indian numerals, after their origin. The Western digits 0 to 9, which Europe calls Arabic numerals, descend from the forms used in North Africa and Spain.
Usage follows geography. The Wikipedia article on Eastern Arabic numerals says both sets are used side by side across Arabic-speaking Asia, Egypt and Sudan, that Western digits are increasingly favoured, particularly in Saudi Arabia, and that the United Arab Emirates uses both. Unicode CLDR reflects this: software set to Arabic for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq or Lebanon prints Eastern digits, while for Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco it prints Western digits.
Although Arabic text runs from right to left, numbers inside it are written with the highest digit on the left, exactly as in Western writing. Arabic has its own decimal separator and thousands separator, both small marks of the Arabic script, and CLDR uses them for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Levant; the table below shows a number written that way. A minus sign stands to the right of the number.
| Arabic | Transliteration | English |
|---|---|---|
| ثَلَاثُ فَتَيَاتٍ | ṯalāṯu fatayātin | three girls |
| أَلْفَانِ وَتِسْعُمِئَةٍ وَٱثْنَتَا عَشْرَةَ سَنَةً | alfāni wa-tisʿu miʾatin wa-ṯnatā ʿašrata sanatan | 2,912 years (formal) |
| ألفين وتسعمئة واثنتا عشرة سنة | alfayn wa-tisʿ mīya wa-ṯnaʿšar sana | 2,912 years (spoken) |
| ١٬٢٣٤٬٥٦٧٫٨٩ | 1,234,567.89 as CLDR formats it for Egypt |
Examples and vocalisation from English Wikipedia's article on Arabic grammar; the last row is the CLDR number format for Arabic in Egypt.
Questions about Arabic numbers
How do you count to 10 in Arabic?
Wāḥid, iṯnān, ṯalāṯa, arbaʿa, ḫamsa, sitta, sabʿa, ṯamāniya, tisʿa, ʿašara. Zero is ṣifr.
What are Eastern Arabic numerals?
The digit shapes used with Arabic script in Egypt, the Levant, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, listed in the counting table on this page. The Maghreb uses the Western digits 0 to 9.
Why does three take the opposite gender in Arabic?
It is a fixed rule called polarity: from three to ten the number takes the masculine form before a feminine noun and the feminine form before a masculine noun.
Are Arabic numbers written right to left?
No. The text runs right to left, but a number keeps its highest digit on the left, as in Western writing.
Where do the words cipher and zero come from?
From Arabic ṣifr, zero, according to English Wikipedia's article on Arabic grammar.