Chinese Numbers 1 to 100: Characters and Pinyin

Chinese is a base-ten language with almost no irregular number words to memorise.

Once you know 1 to 10, you build everything else by combining those characters with three place words: 十 (shí) for ten, 百 (bǎ i) for hundred and 千 (qiān) for thousand. Tens put the unit first, then ten, and any ones simply sit on the end. That one rule carries you from 11 to 99, and the same logic extends into the hundreds and thousands.

These ten characters are the foundation of Mandarin numbers. Learn them first, because every larger number is built from them.
Two of them shift in everyday use. The number 1 changes from yī to yāo in phone numbers, where it could be confused with 7 (qī). The number 2 changes from èr to liǎa'ng when you count people or things, and at the start of 200 and 2,000

The tens work the other way round: the unit comes first, then 十 (shí). So 20 is two tens (2 × 10), written 二十 èrshí, and 30 is three tens, 三十 sānshí.
To fill in the numbers between, add the unit on the end: unit, then 十, then the next unit. For example, 21 is èrshíyī, 33 is sānshísān, 57 is wǔu'shíqī, 72 is qīshí'èr and 89 is bāshíjiu'. The same pattern runs all the way to 99.

Larger numbers follow the same logic, with three new words: hundred bǎ i (百), thousand qiān (千) and ten thousand wàn (万). There are no single characters for million or billion, so you build those from wàn.

Two small sound rules explain the tone marks above. First, yī shifts tone depending on what follows: it becomes yì before most syllables (yìbǎ i, yìqiān) and yí before a fourth-tone syllable (yíwàn). Second, as noted earlier, 2 becomes liǎ ng at the start of 200 and 2,000, so you say liǎ i and ngqiān, not i or èrqiān.

Chinese numbers are one of the friendliest places to start the language. Ten core characters, three words for the bigger units and one consistent rule let you count from 1 well past 100. Learn the table for 1 to 10, practise the tones aloud, and the rest falls into place. The fastest way to make it stick is to use the numbers in real life, which is exactly what a language stay in China with SPRACHCAFFE gives you.