Numbers, months and days

Lesson 5

In this lesson, you’ll learn to say the numbers 0 – 100, months and days of the week in Chinese. That may seem like a lot, but, once you know the numbers 0 – 10, the other numbers are straightforward. Plus, if you know numbers 1-12, learning months and days is easy and intuitive.

Numbers 0 – 10 in Chinese

0	零	líng
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

Numbers 11 – 100 in Chinese

11	十一	shí yī
12	十二	shí èr
13	十三	shí sān
14	十四	shí sì
15	十五	shí wǔ
16	十六	shí liù
17	十七	shí qī
18	十八	shí bā
19	十九	shí jiǔ
20	二十	èr shí
99	九十九	jiǔ shí jiǔ
100	一百	yī bǎi

Note

Learning the Chinese numbers 1 – 100, is not much harder than learning 1 – 10! We just learnt that the number 99 is 九十九. That literally means “nine-ten-nine”. It means there are 9 tens and 9 ones in the number. Here is the formula for all numbers higher than twenty: A × “十” (shí) + B. In this formula, you multiply A by ten (“十”) and then add B to the product. Here are a few examples:

• 4 × “十 ” + 2 = 4 × 10 + 2 = 42
• 6 × “十 ” + 7 = 6 × 10 + 7 = 67
• 9 ×” 十 “+ 1 = 9 × 10 + 1 = 91

Days of the week

星期	xīngqī	week
星期一	xīngqīyī	Monday
星期二	xīngqī’èr	Tuesday
星期三	xīngqīsān	Wednesday
星期四	xīngqīsì	Thursday
星期五	xīngqīwǔ	Friday
星期六	xīngqīliù	Saturday
星期日 or 星期天	xīngqīrì or xīngqītiān	Sunday

Notes

• All of the days, except Sunday, is formed by putting the word week (“星期”) in front of a number. From this we can tell that the first day of the week in China is Monday.
• 星期天 is more casual than 星期日. The characters “天” and “日” both mean “day”.
• This the most frequently used list of the ways of saying days in Chinese. There are two other ways, one of which is more formal and the other is more casual (and used only in spoken Chinese). If you’re interested, you can find out what they are here.

Months

一月	yī yuè	January
二月	èr yuè	February
三月	sān yuè	March
四月	sì yuè	April
五月	wǔ yuè	May
六月	liù yuè	June
七月	qī yuè	July
八月	bā yuè	August
九月	jiǔ yuè	September
十月	shí yuè	October
十一月	shí yī yuè	November
十二月	shí èr yuè	December

Note

The months in Chinese are as simple as putting the number that corresponds to each month in front of the character for month “月” (yuè).