One to Ten

Speaking of bai, I’m finally getting my Chinese number skills down.  The way the Chinese say numbers is actually pretty simple, and in many respects easier to do than in English.

Tomorrow night we have our company’s Chinese New Year party.  Everyone, as usual, was given a lucky ticket with a number on it for prize drawings.  My number was 233.  One of my crew asked me what my number was, and I said in Chinese er bai san shi san.  This, literally translated is “two hundred three ten three.” That’s how you say 33, “three ten three.” 82 would be ba shi er, or “eight ten two.” 2008 is er ling ling ba.

You can read more about Chinese numbers here.

That’s probably why they are so wicked fast with an abacus.

In Japanese:

Ichi

Ni(chi)

San

Shi / Yon

Go

Rok

Seech

Hach

Kyu

Jyu

It’s the same in Samoan: 233 is lua (2) silau (100) tolu (3) sefulu (10) tolu (3). I found it made learning the language much easier.