Spanish Numbers Beyond the Cardinals

You can count to a hundred. Good. Now for everything that count leaves out: the ordinals, the fractions, the collective numbers, the awkward hundreds, dates and the clock. This is the B1-B2 layer of Spanish numbers, and it is where the little agreement and apocope rules earn their keep.

Ordinals: primero to décimo

The ordinals are the words for first, second, third and so on. In everyday Spanish you really only need the first ten, because above that the language usually falls back on plain cardinals.

Ordinals are adjectives, so they agree in gender and number with their noun: la primera vez (the first time), los primeros días (the first days), las segundas oportunidades (second chances).

Two of them clip before a masculine singular noun. This shortening is called apocope: primero becomes primer and tercero becomes tercer.

• el primer día (the first day) - but la primera semana (the first week).
• el tercer piso (the third floor) - but la tercera calle (the third street).
• The full form returns when nothing follows: Llegó primero. (He arrived first.)

Above tenth, Spanish normally switches to cardinals, placed after the noun: el siglo veinte (the twentieth century), Alfonso XIII read as Alfonso trece, el piso doce (the twelfth floor). You can say undécimo or duodécimo, but almost nobody does in speech.

Fractions

Halves have their own words. Medio / media is an adjective and agrees: medio kilo (half a kilo), media hora (half an hour). The noun la mitad (de) means half of: la mitad del pastel (half of the cake).

For the rest, the small fractions have set forms, and from a fifth onward Spanish borrows the -avo ending:

• un tercio (a third), dos tercios (two thirds)
• un cuarto (a quarter), tres cuartos (three quarters)
• un quinto (a fifth), un octavo (an eighth), un décimo (a tenth)
• or with parte: una décima parte (a tenth part), una centésima parte (a hundredth).

Collective numbers

Spanish has friendly round-number nouns for approximate amounts. They take de before the thing counted:

• un par de (a couple of), una decena de (about ten), una docena de (a dozen)
• un centenar de (about a hundred), un millar de (about a thousand)
• and the loose plurals cientos de (hundreds of), miles de (thousands of).

Había cientos de personas. (There were hundreds of people.) Compré una docena de huevos. (I bought a dozen eggs.)

Big numbers and how they agree

Three rules do most of the work.

cien vs ciento. Use cien for exactly 100 and before a bigger unit: cien euros, cien mil, cien millones. Use ciento when a smaller number follows: ciento uno (101), ciento cincuenta (150).

The hundreds agree in gender. From 200 up, the -ientos ending changes for feminine nouns: doscientas casas (two hundred houses), quinientas personas (five hundred people), but doscientos libros, quinientos euros. The irregular ones to watch are quinientos (500), setecientos (700) and novecientos (900).

mil and millón. Mil is invariable and never takes an article for the count: it is mil euros, never "un mil". But millón is a noun: it pluralises to millones and takes de before what it counts: dos millones de personas (two million people), un millón de razones (a million reasons).

In numerals, Spanish is the mirror of English punctuation: the decimal point is a comma and the thousands separator is a dot. So 3,5 is read tres coma cinco, and 1.000 is one thousand.

Percentages

Use por ciento with el or un: el veinte por ciento (twenty per cent), un aumento del diez por ciento (a ten per cent rise). The single word el porcentaje means the percentage itself.

Dates

The pattern is el + number + de + month + de + year: el 3 de mayo de 2024 (the 3rd of May 2024). Months are not capitalised. For the first of the month you may say el primero de mayo or, just as commonly, el uno de mayo; every other day uses a plain cardinal (el dos, el quince).

Years are read as one whole number, never split into pairs the English way: 1990 is mil novecientos noventa, and 2024 is dos mil veinticuatro.

Telling the time

The clock runs on ser plus the article. One o'clock is singular; everything else is plural.

Minutes past the hour go on with y: las dos y diez. Minutes to the next hour come off with menos: las seis menos diez (ten to six). To say at what time, use a: a las tres, a la una. For time of day, add de la mañana (in the morning), de la tarde (in the afternoon) or de la noche (at night): las ocho de la mañana, las diez de la noche. And en punto means on the dot: a las cinco en punto.

Common mistakes English speakers make

Forgetting apocope. It is el primer día, not "el primero día". The clip only happens before a masculine singular noun, so la primera vez keeps its full form.

Leaving cien as cien with a smaller number. As soon as something smaller follows, it must become ciento: ciento uno, not "cien uno".

Dropping the de after millón. Millions of anything need de: dos millones de personas, never "dos millones personas".

Using es for every hour. Only one o'clock takes es la una. Every other hour is plural: son las cuatro.

Copying English punctuation. Remember the swap: 3,5 is a decimal, 1.000 is a thousand.

See also

• Spanish numbers 1 to 100 - the basic cardinals this page builds on.
• Adjective agreement - the gender and number rules that ordinals and the hundreds follow.
• ser and estar - why the clock uses ser, not estar.
• The Spanish grammar cheatsheet has the ordinals and the time phrases on one card.