Numbers in Chinese from líng to yì: characters, pinyin and wàn

How Chinese numbers are built

Chinese numbers work like a place-value system read aloud. English Wikipedia's article on Chinese numerals describes the principle: first the digit, then the place, then the next digit. Thirty-five is sān shí wǔ, three-ten-five; four hundred and twelve is sì bǎi yī shí èr, four-hundred-one-ten-two. Once the ten digit characters and the place words for ten, hundred and thousand are known, every number up to 9,999 follows.

Two details break the pattern. From ten to nineteen the leading one is dropped, so eleven is shí yī, not yī shí yī; but inside a larger number the one comes back, and 110 is yī bǎi yī shí. The Unicode CLDR spelling rules for Chinese produce exactly these forms. The second detail is zero: when a place is empty in the middle of a number, líng marks the gap, once, however many zeros there are. 101 is yī bǎi líng yī and 1,001 is yī qiān líng yī.

The circle form of zero appears in years and other digit-by-digit readings, where every digit is read on its own. The CLDR rules for years write 2026 as èr líng èr liù with the circle for zero, and the months page shows how the year fits into a full date.

Counting in ten thousands

Western languages group digits in threes: thousand, million, billion. Chinese groups them in fours. Wàn is ten thousand, and yì is ten thousand wàn, a hundred million. English Wikipedia's article on Chinese numerals regroups 1,234,567,890 as 12,3456,7890 to show how a Chinese speaker reads it: twelve yì, three thousand four hundred and fifty-six wàn, seven thousand eight hundred and ninety.

A million therefore has no word of its own. It is yī bǎi wàn, a hundred wàn, and 1.4 billion is shí sì yì, fourteen hundred-millions. The same article notes that in Taiwan Arabic numerals are officially grouped by thousands, while mixed forms with wàn and yì are common in both official and everyday writing.

Two in Chinese: èr or liǎng

Chinese has two words for two. Wiktionary's usage note sets the rule for Standard Mandarin: liǎng is used when counting things with a measure word, èr in numbers. Two people is liǎng ge rén, two years liǎng nián, but twenty is èr shí and the second is dì èr.

Hundreds, thousands and myriads accept both. The article on Chinese numerals says liǎng is often used for the two in numbers of 200 and above, and that either is acceptable for 200; the CLDR rules list a separate spelling set with liǎng bǎi, liǎng qiān and liǎng wàn. In the tens and units, inside a larger number, the two is always èr: 22 is èr shí èr.

On the phone, when reading out an ID number, in aviation and in the army, mainland speakers say yāo for one to reduce ambiguity, a usage Wiktionary records with a note that a second form of its character is standard in Taiwan.

Lucky and unlucky numbers in Chinese

Chinese has many near-homophones, and numbers inherit the meanings of words they sound like. English Wikipedia's article on Chinese numerology names six and eight as widely considered lucky and four as unlucky. Eight, bā, sounds like fā, to prosper, and the article adds that being assigned a number with several eights is considered very lucky.

Four, sì, differs from sǐ, death, only in tone. The article on tetraphobia notes that Chinese speakers avoid phone numbers and addresses with fours, and that some buildings in Hong Kong skip floors with a four in their number. The financial numerals have a practical history too: the article on Chinese numerals says they were created so that a few added strokes could not turn thirty into five thousand.