Numbers in German from null to a Milliarde: IPA, ordinals and rules

How German numbers are built

Up to twelve every number has its own word. From thirteen to nineteen German adds -zehn to the unit, as English adds -teen: dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn. Two units are shortened on the way. Sechs drops its final s in sechzehn and sechzig, and sieben drops -en in siebzehn and siebzig. Dreißig is the odd ten out, with ß where the others have -zig.

From 21 to 99 the order turns round. German says the unit, then und, then the ten: einundzwanzig is one-and-twenty, siebenundvierzig seven-and-forty, neunundneunzig nine-and-ninety. For learners this order is the biggest source of mistakes when listening, because the ear hears the unit first and has to wait for the ten.

Hundreds and thousands go in front, in the normal order: hundertdreiundzwanzig is 123, zweitausendsechsundzwanzig is 2026. The ein before hundert and tausend is optional, so hundert and einhundert are both correct, and the Duden accepts hunderteins, hundertundeins and einhunderteins for 101. The CLDR spelling rules print the long form, einhundert.

Everything below a million is one word, however long: siebenhundertachtundneunzigtausendfünfhundertzweiundvierzig. Million and Milliarde are feminine nouns and stand apart, with a capital letter: eine Million, zwei Millionen dreihunderttausend. The Duden gives this last form as its own example.

Eins, ein, eine and the telephone word zwo

One has three forms. When counting, or at the end of a number, it is eins: eins, zwei, drei; hunderteins. In front of a noun it works like the article and changes with gender: ein Euro, eine Stunde, ein Jahr. Inside compounds it is ein-: einundzwanzig, eintausend. The noun die Eins is the digit, a school mark or a tram line, as in sie hat eine Eins in Latein.

Two has a second form. The Duden lists zwo as colloquial and often used for clarity, to avoid confusing it acoustically with drei. It is the usual form when phone numbers or codes are read out. It comes from the old feminine form zwō of Middle and Old High German.

Years from 1100 to 1999 are read in hundreds, the way English reads them: 1999 is neunzehnhundertneunundneunzig, the form the CLDR rules for years also produce. From 2000 on they are read as thousands: zweitausendsechsundzwanzig.

Milliarde and Billion: the long scale

German counts large numbers on the long scale, like most of continental Europe. A thousand millions is eine Milliarde, which the Duden defines exactly that way, and a million millions is eine Billion. English billion is therefore Milliarde, and English trillion is Billion. Financial news is full of false friends here: a Billion euros in a German headline is a thousand times more than a billion in an English one.

The abbreviations follow the nouns. The Duden gives Mill. or Mio. for Million and Md., Mrd. or Mia. for Milliarde. A budget of 2,5 Mrd. Euro reads zweieinhalb Milliarden Euro.

Decimal comma and thousands separator in German

German writes the decimal comma where English writes a point, and reads it as Komma: 3,5 is drei Komma fünf.

Money is spoken with the currency word in the middle: 2,50 € is zwei Euro fünfzig, the example the Duden itself gives under zwei. A number used as a noun for the digit, a school mark or a bus line is feminine and capitalised, die Drei, die Sieben, so a pupil can write eine Zwei in Mathe and a passenger can wait for die Elf.

The thousands separator differs by country. CLDR, the locale data behind most software, formats one million two hundred thirty-four thousand as 1.234.567,89 for Germany, with a point between thousands. For Austria it uses a space, 1 234 567,89, and for Switzerland an apostrophe with a decimal point, 1'234'567.89. A Swiss price label therefore reads CHF 1'250.50. The Duden itself spells the million in figures with spaces, 1 000 000.