Ch 1 · Lesson 42Esperanto · Chapter 1 · Lesson 42 · Grammar primer

How Esperanto numbers work

Tens and hundreds join up (), everything else stays apart ( , ): the whole number system in one spelling rule, plus the -a that turns any number into first, second, third.

The short version

Tens and hundreds join up; everything else stays apart

twenty-two, one hundred and twenty-three

Why?

Nine roots plus , cent and give you every number in Esperanto, and one spelling rule assembles them. Tens and hundreds are written solid: is two tens, is two hundreds. Everything else stays apart: is ten plus two, and (never ) is two thousand. So is 22 and is 123. There is no thirteen--three irregularity waiting for you, because nothing here is irregular.

Cardinals do not take -j or -n

I see three people.

Why?

In the noun picks up both endings and stays untouched. Speakers of Slavic and Romance languages expect the number to react, and it does not (only , used as a pronoun, can: unuj , some and the others). The only numbers that decline are the ones that have stopped being numbers: ordinals are adjectives, , and forms like and are nouns. Endings and suffixes build those out of a cardinal: -a, -o, -on-, -obl- and -op-.

Learn nine roots plus , and , and one spelling rule joins them into every number in Esperanto. Tens and hundreds join (, twenty); everything else stays apart ( , twelve). Nothing is irregular.

Ninety-seven is , nine-ten seven, where French needs quatre-vingt-dix-sept and English hides the ten inside eleven and twelve.

The whole vocabulary

Number	Word	Number	Word
0		6
1		7
2		8
3		9
4		10
5		100
		1000

one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten

That is the list. Every number up to 999,999 is built from these:

. - I have two books.
aĝa. - She is ten years old.

Zero

is the numeral; is the noun, for zero as a thing:

- zero eight two (a code, read digit by digit)
. - The temperature is below zero.

Saying them

Esperanto spelling is phonetic, so the only traps are letters English reads differently:

Word	Say it	The trap
	tsent	`c` is always ts, never the coin
		a real k then a real v, not kw
	now	one syllable: `ŭ` is a w glide
		stress falls on the second-to-last

The join rule

Two operations, two spellings:

times dek or cent (joined)adds (apart)ordinal -aWhat do the colours mean?

2 x 10 = dudek, written as one word

10 + 2 = dek du, written as two words

Number	Esperanto	Working
12		10 + 2
20		2 x 10
22		2 x 10 + 2
90		9 x 10
101		100 + 1
123		100 + 20 + 3
200		2 x 100
250		200 + 50
999		900 + 90 + 9

is a joined ten and a separate unit in one breath; after that, the number line writes itself. In a sentence:

. - She is twenty-two. (literally: has twenty-two years)

The join happens only with and . always stays a separate word, because almost anything can stand in front of it ( , 333,000):

- 2,000 (PMEG counts as a misspelling)
- 12,000

The popular shortcut, "multiplication joins, addition stays apart", is right everywhere except here.

The number line from 11 to 1,000

Every ten and hundred, written out. Each one is the join rule applied once.

The teens and the tens

Number	Esperanto	Number	Esperanto
11		20
12		30
13		40
14		50
15		60
16		70
17		80
18		90
19		100

The hundreds

Number	Esperanto	Number	Esperanto
100		600
200		700
300		800
400		900
500		1000

They do not decline

plural -jobject -nWhat do the colours mean?

Cardinals take no -j and no -n. The noun takes both; the number sits still:

- three books
. - I see three books.

If your first language puts endings on numbers, this is the habit to drop, and nothing replaces it. The one exception is as a pronoun rather than a count:

unuj - the ones and the others

Words built from numbers do decline, because they are no longer numbers. An ordinal is an adjective; is a noun:

- the first days (as an object)
- two million

Going further: Thousands, millions and billions and the rest of the guide, when you want them. This lesson does not need them.

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