Do you really know how to count in Chinese?

Even intermediate and sometimes advanced students struggle with counting in Chinese. What exactly do I mean by that, and how can you really learn to count in Mandarin?

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Memorising numbers isn’t enough to count in Chinese

Many students believe that once they can count from one to one hundred (or even beyond), they have “learnt” the numbers. However, counting is a prime example where merely knowing the basic definitions isn’t sufficient. Simply memorising the list of numbers in chapter five of your textbook and acing the exam won’t necessarily allow you to communicate fluently.

To handle dates, times, prices, or shopping conversations in Mandarin, you need to internalise the process of recalling numbers. This means developing fluency. It’s not about how much Mandarin you know, but how well you can use it. You can achieve fluency even as a beginner in areas you choose to focus on.

How to become fluent in Chinese

Becoming fluent with numbers is a good example of something you can do as a beginner, but which few students do. As a teacher, I’ve encountered many students, sometimes fairly advanced, who still need to think about how to say dates and tell the time.

What makes counting difficult in Chinese?

In this article, I will explore why counting is challenging at different stages of learning Chinese:

1. Learning to count as a beginner: Why learning numbers in sequence is bad
2. Talking about large numbers: Embedding numbers in meaningful contexts
3. Mastering small numbers: Why ingrained patterns are hard to change
4. Understanding spoken numbers: Why knowing the gist isn’t enough

If you’re a beginner, focus on the first part about why learning numbers in sequence is not good. More advanced students will gain more from the later parts and might want to skip the first one.

1. Learning to count as a beginner: Why learning numbers in sequence is bad

Most beginner courses teach students to count to one hundred within the first few days, which is excellent because numbers are fundamental to basic communication. The numbers one through ten are extremely frequent in everyday language and it’s hard to communicate without them.

However, there’s a challenge: learning to count from one to ten, or even to an arbitrarily large number, is a specific and isolated task. It’s quite different from using numbers in real-life communication. You start by memorising 一 (yī) “one”, 二 (èr) “two”, 三 (sān) “three”, 四 (sì) “four”, 五 (wǔ) “five”, and so on, which is a logical starting point. As I’ve recommended elsewhere, you can practise this sequence by counting how many steps you take to the grocery store, how many eggs go into your omelette, or how many seconds you hold a handstand.

The cheapest and most convenient way to improve your spoken Chinese

Why you have to connect numbers to meaning to learn them

Unfortunately, many teachers (and consequently their students) get stuck on memorising the sequence rather than focusing on engaging with numbers in meaningful ways.

As a result, many students can, at least in theory, count to one thousand by the end of the first week, but they struggle to make sense of individual numbers like 78, 233, or 401. They can say 78, but only if they recall 77 first, and even that is easiest if they start from 76! This is true for some intermediate students too.

In communication, numbers usually don’t appear in a sequence. You’ll often need to answer questions or understand the answer to questions like: “What date is it?” “What time does the lesson end?” “Which page should you turn to?” or “How old are you?” Reciting a memorised sequence is not only slow but impractical in these situations.

Breaking free from number sequences

If you want to check how dependent you are on counting up in sequence and then improve your fluency with numbers, try these activities:

• Count backwards: Start from 100 and count downwards. If this is very hard for you, that’s a sign that you’ve been relying too much on the normal sequence.
• Odd and even numbers: Count only odd (1, 3, 5…) or even numbers (2, 4, 6…). Again, if this is hard, you know you’ve been using the 4 to recall how to say 5.
• Random numbers: Generate random numbers and practise saying them out of sequence. You can use Excel or Google Sheets (e.g., =RAND()) to create random lists.
• Use an app: Tools like Chinese Number Trainer Lite offer varied ways to practise numbers.

Making numbers part of everyday communication

The best way to become fluent with numbers is to integrate them into everyday communication. Competent teachers will naturally involve numbers in their lessons. For instance, if every class begins with a quick chat about the current date and time, you’ll pick up those numbers quickly. If you have a language partner or tutor, schedule your next session in Chinese, discussing dates and times. If you do these things in English, you miss a great learning opportunity.

Real communication: What it is, why you want it and how to get it

2. Talking about large numbers: Embedding numbers in meaningful contexts

Once you’re comfortable counting up to a thousand, you’ll encounter the next challenge: large numbers. To start, you need to familiarise yourself with how Chinese numbers differ from English. For example, zeros must be pronounced, unlike in English where we often skip them. So, 101 is 一百零一 (yībǎilíngyī), not 一百一 (yībǎiyī), which is actually short for 110. Additionally, when there’s only one ten, it still needs to be explicitly stated, so 110 is 一百一十 (yībǎiyīshí), not 一百十 (yībǎishí).

The most significant hurdle beyond the beginner level is that Chinese changes to a new word for large numbers every fourth zero, whereas in English, the change occurs every third zero.

Here’s how it works (note how the zeroes are grouped):

• One million:
  English: 1,000,000 – one million
  Chinese: 100,0000 – 一百万 (yībǎiwàn)
• One hundred million:
  English: 100,000,000 – one hundred million
  Chinese: 1,0000,0000 – 一亿 (yīyì)

This pattern continues with Chinese changing the word every four digits, making it challenging to keep track of large numbers. Even advanced students and native speakers sometimes count the zeros to ensure accuracy when switching between languages.

Practising large numbers in Chinese vs English

Use a stopwatch to see how long it takes you to say the following numbers aloud in Chinese. I’ve grouped them according to how we’d typically say them in English:

• 10,127
• 688,284
• 4,824,854
• 70,042,032
• 513,963,776
• 6,836,238,955

Now do the same in English. Here are my results:

• Swedish: 15 seconds
• English: 16 seconds
• Chinese: 42 seconds

While we rarely need to say long, specific numbers, we often have to use large, rounded figures in conversation. For instance, when asked how many people live in your country or how far it is from your hometown to the capital, you don’t want to spend 15 seconds counting zeros and breaking numbers into Chinese-style fours.

I’m not saying you need to know how to say 70,042,032 fast, but I am saying that you need to be able to say “70 million” in Chinese without having to count zeroes.

Using reference points to improve fluency with large numbers

The problem with large numbers is that they are abstract. Numbers like three, five and twelve have concrete meanings, but 70 million and 2 trillion don’t, so they’re harder to internalise. To remedy this, anchor each step in the scale to something concrete and specific that is meaningful to you.

Here are some examples that I use, but that you might need to adjust based on where you live and what you’re situation is like.

• Monthly salaries might be in the万 range (if you live in China or Sweden, in local currencies)
• Yearly salaries fall into the 十万 range
• The price of an apartment or house is in the 百万 range

If you’re an American, your currency is worth about ten times as much as the Chinese yuan or Swedish crown, so move everything down one step:

• New cars are typically in the 万 range too (in US dollars)
• The price of an apartment or house is in the 十万 range
• The population of the biggest cities is in the 百万 range

If you’re dealing with larger numbers, I think continuing with population sizes makes more sense:

• Small countries like Sweden have populations in the 千万 range.
• Large countries like the US have populations in the 亿 range.
• China and India have populations in the 十亿 range.
• The global population might reach the 百亿 range this century.

For those in finance or economics, even larger numbers are common:

• The market capitalisation of companies like Nike, Coca-Cola, or Netflix is in the 千亿 range.

So, what’s next? What about the market capitalisation of Apple? Or the US federal budget?

一万万 makes 一兆, except when it doesn’t

You might expect the word for one trillion in Chinese to take over after 千亿, which is 兆 (zhào), but in finance, 万亿 (wànyì) is more common, even though this breaks the usual pattern. This may be due to the ease of comparing numbers if 亿 is consistently used. However, 兆 is still used in scientific contexts and can be used to mean “trillion” in general.

As you can see, learning large numbers goes far beyond chapter five in your first textbook.

3. Learning to talk about small numbers: Why ingrained patterns are hard to change

Another challenge when learning Chinese numbers is using fractions. The rule itself is straightforward: the denominator comes first, followed by the numerator, with a 之 (zhī) in between. This is the opposite of what we normally do in English. So, “one-fourth” is 四分之一 (sìfēnzhīyī), not 一分之四 (yīfēnzhīsì), and “eight percent” is 百分之八 (bǎifēnzhībā).

Although most students understand this rule in theory, using it effortlessly in conversation is surprisingly difficult. Even after many thousands of hours of speaking Chinese, I occasionally catch myself switching the numbers around. I always notice the error immediately, but the issue is that if you start with the denominator (e.g., “three-fourths”) and say 三 (sān), you’ve already lost.

The subtle difficulty of mastering fractions

Fortunately, this rarely hinders communication. You’ll quickly get used to hearing common fractions and percentages, and even if you make a mistake by saying the denominator first, it’s easy to correct and restate it correctly.

I mention this challenge not because it’s a major communication barrier, but to highlight how something as small as fractions can be surprisingly tricky to master. It’s a reminder that ingrained patterns from your native language can persist, even in advanced stages of learning. Learning the rule explicitly does not mean you’ll be able to use it.

4. Understanding spoken numbers: Why knowing the gist isn’t enough

Understanding numbers when spoken in context can also be a challenge, and not just when it comes to large numbers. To highlight the problem, I conducted a small experiment. A native speaker read 16 randomly generated phone numbers to me in Chinese, one digit at a time, and I tried to write them down. We tried several times to find the maximum rate of speech at which I could still write down all digits correctly.

To check that writing speed wasn’t the issue, we repeated the test in English. Here are my best times for both hearing and writing down an 11-digit phone number correctly:

Chinese: 6 seconds
English: 3 seconds

That’s twice as long! When people recite phone numbers at a natural speed, they don’t slow down nearly that much.

Why speed and accuracy with numbers matter

What happens if you don’t catch numbers, whether big or small when they’re spoken quickly? Does it really matter?

Yes, it does, and for several reasons, most of which are tied to listening speed. Numbers are considered easy by native speakers, and they’ll assume you understand them without any trouble. If you’re listening to Chinese content aimed at native speakers and can’t process numbers fast enough, this lag can lead to gaps in your overall comprehension.

This issue becomes even more significant during exams, where you might be asked about dates, prices, or phone numbers. In these cases, simply having a rough idea of the answer isn’t enough, you need to understand the numbers quickly and precisely to perform well.

Processing large numbers in spoken Chinese

Understanding spoken numbers presents its own unique challenges, especially with the shift to grouping digits by four zeros in Chinese. This can be tricky in fast-paced situations like news reports or business meetings. When listening, you need to instantly grasp the numbers without taking extra seconds to process them. Your ability to handle numbers has to be fully automated, requiring true fluency.

Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 4: Learning to process spoken Mandarin quickly and effortlessly

As mentioned, one key issue is that we often don’t try to associate large numbers with specific meanings. When listening to a podcast or watching the news, it’s usually enough to recognise that a number is “big” or “even bigger” without needing to know the exact figure.

As a result, you might listen to hundreds or thousands of hours of spoken Chinese yet still struggle with accurately parsing numbers. Usually, understanding the gist is enough, so you’re not even trying to connect the numbers you hear with meaning.

Numbers, especially large ones, tend to be abstract and meaningless unless they’re relevant. If there’s no need to fully process them, your brain takes the efficient route and skips over them. To become truly fluent with numbers in Chinese, you need to engage with them meaningfully.

We learn to process the language we engage with

For intermediate learners, handling numbers within familiar ranges (such as food prices) is usually fine. Why? Because that’s the kind of language you engage with often Similarly, a physicist discussing nanometres in Chinese or a real-estate broker quoting housing prices won’t have to think twice about the numbers crucial to their work.

The key is that unless you engage with language where the numbers matter beyond being “big”, you won’t learn to parse them properly. The first time you hear someone discuss house prices in Chinese, it will be dizzying if you’re not used to it, but if you spent a year looking for a house, talking about it in Chinese all the time, you’ll be very good at numbers in this range.

Making large numbers meaningful in your learning

You don’t need to be a physicist or a real-estate broker to master numbers, but you do need to practise numbers in a way that makes them meaningful for you. Regular exposure to relevant numerical contexts, whether it’s pricing, measurements, or population figures, will improve your fluency with numbers. By embedding numbers in contexts that matter, you force your brain to process them accurately instead of skipping over them as abstract figures.

In short, counting really does count, even for intermediate and advanced students!

Editor’s note: This article, originally published in 2013, was rewritten from scratch and massively updated in October 2024.