Counting in Mandarin (1~99) Video Script

Hey guys, I’m back again! And this time, we are going to talk about counting, 數數. The 1st 數 is in the 3rd tone, and it’s a verb, meaning to count; the 2nd 數 is in the 4th tone, and it’s a noun, meaning numbers. So 數數 means counting.

In this video, you are going to learn how to count any number within 1 to 99. Are you ready?

These are the numbers 1 to 10. I will say the English number once, and the Mandarin one twice. One, 一, 一. Two, 二, 二. Three, 三, 三. Four, 四, 四. Five, 五, 五. Six, 六, 六. Seven, 七, 七. Eight, 八, 八. Nine, 九, 九. Ten, 十, 十.

Okay, there you go! I am going to count again from 1 to 10. 一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十.

Now, we are ready to tackle more numbers. Unlike English and many other languages, we don’t have special names for eleven, twelve, etc. We simply call it, literally, ten-one, ten-two, etc., just like we do in English in the twenties and so on. We also call twenty, thirty, … as literal as you can imagine: two tens, three tens, … For 11 to 20, we have 十一, 十二, 十三, 十四, 十五, 十六, 十七, 十八, 十九, 二十.

Basically, you have now learned all the numbers from 1 to 99. Here are a few examples. Yes, I may have a thing for prime numbers. 23 is 2*10 + 3, so it’s … that’s right, 二十三. 67 is therefore 六十七, and 89 is, you got it, 八十九.This concludes our video for today, and I hope it helped! If you have any questions, please leave a comment down below, and we will learn how to count to more than 9 quadrillions, which is pretty much more than you’d ever need, in our next video. Until then, bye~