Kilo Lingo

Mandarin · Chapter 12 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer

Numbers, time, dates, currency

Numbers to a million. The 二/两 split. Ordinals with 第. Dates (年/月/日/号), times (X点 X分), durations, currency (元/块/毛). The time-before-verb word-order rule.

The short version

Mandarin counts in fours and resets at 万 (wàn)

There is no single word for 'million'. Numbers group in blocks of four and reset at 万 (wàn, 10,000), so 100,000 is 十万 (shí wàn), literally ten ten-thousands, and a million is 一百万 (yì bǎi wàn). Converting from English, divide the digit count by four rather than three, and slow down.

一百万 yì bǎi wàn

1,000,000

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Lesson 8 of 22 in this chapter

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