Learn the Basics of Chinese Numbers: Count from 1 to 10 in Mandarin

Numbers show up in all aspects of life, so it's fair to say that if you want to learn Chinese, you need to know your numbers. Thankfully, while Chinese is hard to learn, Chinese numbers aren't. You'll probably have them down by the time you finish this post.

(Disclaimer: English numbers will seem illogical after you learn Chinese ones. We are not responsible for mental distress caused as a result.)

[Table] The Chinese numbers and how to pronounce them

Here's everything you need to know at a glance:

* Note on "one" → this character can be pronounced in a couple different ways. See the dedicated section on "one" for more information.

Two things you should know to make sense of the above table:

Then, just for fun, here's how the above Chinese characters look in a few different fonts:

One → 一 (yī)

Mnemonic: written with a single stroke, this character intuitively represents the number one.

It's important to note that even though the pinyin representation has a "y," the actual pronunciation of the word is simply "ee" without an initial consonant.

Two → 二 (ér)

Mnemonic: Written with two strokes, this character is another one that just makes sense.

Note that this sound is not quite the English "are" nor is it quite like the "arr" of a pirate; instead, the tongue is more forward in the mouth and the sound of the "r" is brief.

Three → 三 (sān)

Mnemonic: It's formed by three horizontal lines.

The vowel is similar to "ah" when indicating surprise. The other two consonants are similar to their English counterparts.

Four → 四 (sì)

Mnemonic: The character for four is square, with four sides.

The vowel here does not exist in English, however, it shouldn't be too hard to say. If you make an "oo" sound like in "Sue," you'll notice that your lips become quite rounded. All you need to do to say this correctly is to "unround" those lips by relaxing them. This will feel quite unnatural at first. It will be helpful to try mimicking the sound of the audio to fine-tune your ability.

Five → 五 (wǔ)

Mnemonic: The character for five kind of looks like a 5.

It's important to note that even though this character is written with "w" in pinyin, it's generally going to be pronounced as simply "oo" without any consonant sound.

Six → 六 (liù)

Mnemonic: This character kind of looks like a hat with legs. It's missing the head of which there are 6 main features: 2 eyes, 2 ears, 1 nose, and 1 mouth.

This is another case where the pinyin can be misleading. The standard pronunciation of this character ends in an "oh" sound that rhymes with "low," and not in an "oo" sound suggested by the "u" in the pinyin. Some speakers may say the latter, though, depending on their dialect.

Seven → 七 (qī)

Mnemonic: This character resembles a hook that has made a catch. Lucky, just like the number 7.

This sounds very similar to "chee" but do note that it is not the exact same. To make this sound your tongue should be slightly further back.

Eight → 八 (bā)

Mnemonic: It depicts two steep lines, but they're not quite ninety degrees; rather, it stops short at eighty.

There's two ways you can think about this sound. 1. It's like "bah" but your vocal chords don't vibrate. 2. It's like "pah" but there's puff of air when you say it.

Nine → 九 (jiǔ)

Mnemonic: Similar to above but it now has a ninety degree bend.

The pinyin "j" is similar to the "j" in English but it has some key differences. Your tongue will be farther forward in the mouth and your vocal chords shouldn't be vibrating when you say it. If you pronounce it as "Joe" with the correct tone, you can probably be understood.

Ten → 十 (shí)

Mnemonic: It resembles a cross, and ten marks the crossover from the one's place to the ten's place.

This consonant is similar to "sh" in English but you need to curl your tongue backward towards the roof of your mouth. This vowel is actually completely different from the one in 四 sì (four). It's very similar to the "ur" in the word "purse."

How numbers bigger than 10 work

It's actually quite straightforward to form numbers bigger than 10. You just need to know two things:

Examples:

All of the numbers from 11-99 follow this pattern. There are specific characters for 100, 1,000, and 10,000. These are (bǎi)百

, (qiān)千, and (wàn)万 , respectively. However, they must be paired with another number; they cannot stand alone.

You can apply the above principles to make any number Chinese number!

An easy way to learn to count in Chinese →

The Migaku Chinese Academy is a data-driven course built to teach you the ~1,500 words and ~300 sentence structures you need to follow 80% of Chinese media as efficiently as possible.

As you might imagine, numbers are important things to know, and they have a place within our course.

Behold:

What's special about our course is that we don't just throw this stuff at you in isolation. You'll learn the numbers (and every other word) in the context of useful sentences, and the course has been carefully arranged such that every sentence we teach you includes only one word.

Naturally, these flashcards are also backed by spaced repetition, ensuring that you actually remember them.

Anyway—that's our promise. Give us half an hour a day for six months, you'll be ready to start doing cool stuff in Chinese.

Learn Chinese with Migaku

Bam! That's everything you need to know about the numbers in Mandarin Chinese.

... but there's something important you should understand about language learning:

So go ahead and learn the numbers, explore Chinese grammar, and be a good student—but don't forget to actually spend time using Chinese to do things you enjoy, too.