2.7 Numbers 1 to 100, and Two Words for Two — Epoché
What you will be able to do Say and write every number from one to one hundred, building the ones in between out of ten characters. Choose correctly between 二 and 两 , the two words for "two". Read a clock time, a date, and a day of the week. Read a telephone number, including the one digit that changes its pronunciation when digits are said one at a time. Prerequisites : 2.4, where you learned to say that somebody has something. Many sentences in this lesson put a number inside that pattern, so keep it beside you: 2.4 Grammar . The number system is the most regular thing in the language and the easiest win in the volume. Ten characters give you one to ten; the same ten characters, combined by one rule, give you every number up to ninety-nine; two more give you the hundreds and the thousands. Below a hundred there is nothing to memorise beyond the ten, apart from the choice between two words for "two" that this lesson also teaches. Compare the English teens and the English tens, which are a museum of historical accidents, and you will see what a regular system looks like. The one real difficulty in this lesson is that Mandarin has two words for "two" and uses them in different places. That is not a case of one being formal and the other casual; the split is grammatical, and getting it wrong is one of the most audible beginner's mistakes in the language. It also explains why the next lesson has to be about counting words, because the rule for choosing between the two words is stated in terms of them. The pattern Here are the ten characters. Learn them in order, aloud, with their tones, and write each one out until you can produce it from the pinyin. They are among the simplest characters in the script: six of them have one or two strokes. Value Character Pinyin 1 一 yī 2 二 èr 3 三 sān 4 四 sì 5 五 wǔ 6 六 liù 7 七 qī 8 八 bā 9 九 jiǔ 10 十 shí The corpus counts these out for you: 一，二，三，四，五。 [1] Notice the punctuation between them: the corpus uses a full-width comma here, but a list like this is more often written with the enumeration comma 、 , which leans the other way from the English one; a later phase returns to that. For now, read the row aloud and mind the tones, because three of the ten are fourth tone and two are third, and a beginner reading a list of numbers tends to flatten all of them. Building the numbers in between The rule has two halves and no exceptions. To make a number from eleven to nineteen, say ten and then the units digit. To make a multiple of ten, say the digit and then ten. To make anything else, do both: digit, ten, digit. That is the whole system. Value Characters Pinyin 11 十一 shíyī 12 十二 shí'èr 20 二十 èrshí 21 二十一 èrshíyī 35 三十五 sānshíwǔ 99 九十九 jiǔshíjiǔ 100 一百 yībǎi Read the second and third rows together. Twelve is ten-two and twenty is two-ten, and the only difference between them is the order. A learner who has not drilled this will hesitate over exactly that pair for months, so drill it: say twelve, twenty, twelve, twenty until the order comes without thought. Then the corpus sentences become readable at once. 我三十岁。 [2] means "I'm thirty", built as three-ten; 我三十二岁。 [3] is thirty-two, three-ten-two; 我今年十九岁。 [4] is "I'm nineteen", ten-nine, with the word for "this year" in front; and 她十二岁。 [5] is twelve, built as ten-two. One hundred is 一百 , and the leading one is not optional the way English can drop it in "a hundred". For a thousand you need one more character, 千 qiān, and the same combining rule keeps working. The rest of the large numbers wait for lesson 3.3, because Mandarin groups large numbers in units of ten thousand rather than in thousands, and that regrouping needs room of its own. Two words for two 二 èr is the numeral two: the thing you say when you count, when you read a digit out of a longer number, and when you name the second of a series. 两 liǎng is the word for two things: the one you use when a counting word and a noun follow. The distinction has no equivalent in English, which uses "two" everywhere, so there is no intuition to fall back on and the rule has to be learned as a rule. Where you are Which word Counting aloud, or reading a digit 二 èr Naming the second of a series 二 èr As the tens or the units digit inside a longer number 二 èr Before a counting word, or before a noun such as 年 or 天 that takes a number directly 两 liǎng The hour "two" in a clock time 两 liǎng The corpus gives the second half of the table plainly. 我有两本书。 [6] is "I have two books", with a counting word for bound things between the number and the noun. 他有两只猫。 [7] uses the counting word for animals, and 我有两个儿子。 [8] uses the general one. In all three the number is 两 and never 二 , and in all three there is a syllable between the number and the noun that English has no room for. Compare a sentence with a different number: 她有五个孩子。 [9] , "she has five children". Same shape, same counting word, and the number is the ordinary numeral because nothing special happens to five. Two smaller points. Inside a longer number the tens and units digits are always 二 , which is why thirty-two and twelve in the corpus sentences above end in it even though a counting word follows the whole number. And for two hundred, both forms are heard: the one with 两 is the commoner in speech, the one with 二 the commoner in writing and in reading figures aloud. Neither will be misunderstood. Clock time A clock time is a number followed by 点 diǎn, the word for the hour. Minutes are a number followed by 分 fēn, and the half hour is 半 bàn, placed where the minutes would go. The word 钟 zhōng, "clock", may be added after the hour with no change of meaning. Chinese English 现在三点。 [10] It's three o'clock now. 现在五点钟。 [11] It's five o'clock now. 我五点在家。 [12] I'm at home at five. The first two rows are the same sentence with and without the optional "clock". The third row is the important one, because the time stands after the subject and before the place and the verb. English would put it at the end, and lesson 2.10 is about