For anyone who hasn't studied a foreign language extensively, you might be surprised to learn that numbers are much more difficult than your intuition would suggest.
You might think, what's the big deal? You need memorize around 40 words (i.e., the words for 0-9, 10-19, 20, 30, ..., 90, 100, 1000, million, etc.), plus a few rules, and then practice until you're fast.
I want to point out some difficulties that people learning English encounter. Every foreign language will have its own anomalies.
- In English, a year like 1776 is spoken as 17-76, not as one thousand seven hundred seventy six. And if you say it the long way, a native English speaker might even get a little thrown off.
- As an exception to the above, a year like 2001, is spoken as two thousand and one, not as 20-01.
- As an exception to the exception above, a year like 1701 is spoken as 17-oh-1, and not the long way.
- Times like 3:45 are spoken in numerous ways, like 3-45, quarter to 4, 15-45 if afternoon, or possibly even 15 to 4.
- When giving an address, 386 Maple is said as 3-86 Maple, not as 3-8-6 nor the long the way.
- You need to learn fractions and ordinal numbers: half, one-third, an-eighth, etc. You eat a third of a cake on the third floor, but half a cake on the second floor; i.e., different words in the case of number 2 (half vs second).
- When speaking a series of digits, 0 can be said as oh or zero; in many contexts, oh is much more common.
- Other exceptions and special cases with dates, prices, decimal points, measurements, ...
> As an exception to the above, a year like 2001, is spoken as two thousand and one, not as 20-01.
The vast majority of the time, but 20-01 is certainly understood, and is becoming more common as we progress through the century. (20-09 is more common than 20-01.)
Possibly because 2001 has an extra word in British English: "two thousand and one" rather than "two thousand one".
> Times like 3:45 are spoken in numerous ways, like 3-45, quarter to 4, 15-45 if afternoon, or possibly even 15 to 4.
Fifteen minutes to four. "Minutes" is usually excluded for 5, 10, 20 and 25, and nothing else.
But, there's usually a preferred choice of which way the time should be spoken, e.g. I can finish work at quarter past five, and take the seventeen thirty train home, which arrives at seventeen fifty-two, I'll be home by six.
> When giving an address, 386 Maple is said as 3-86 Maple, not as 3-8-6 nor the long the way.
So American! More than any of the others, should one want to sound British, don't say this.
In Britain, it's always either "three hundred and eighty six, Maple Street" or "three, eight, six, Maple Street".
> When speaking a series of digits, 0 can be said as oh or zero; in many contexts, oh is much more common.
Also nought, as in 0.003005, "nought point nought nought three oh oh five" (yes, really).
"Nil" for football, "we lost three - nil".
(And the dates, prices and measurements are all slightly different. Briefly, it's "the twenty-eighth of February" or [less common] "February the twenty-eighth", the "of" or "the" are essential. "One pound thirty", never like "a dollar thirty", and "fifty" pence/pee never "half". Either metric measurements, or a preference for different units if using traditional measurements -- stone over pounds for body weight, yards over feet for distances.)
Those examples also show regional variation: in most forms of U.S. English "naught" and "nil" are almost unheard of today and those examples would be "3-oh-8" and "1-zero" (or "1-nothing" or "1-oh", or maybe some other variants that would probably be marked as humorous or satirical like "zip" or "zilch").
True but when we talk about nuances in English numbers, we do have to consider the other common ways. For someone who is learning English numbers and watches, say football (soccer), they would often hear 1-nil in commentary. If they are restricting themselves to just U.S. English numbers, they would be left confused in this example.
> Numbers behave in a quite complicated fashion. wāḥid- "one" and ithnān- "two" are adjectives, following the noun and agreeing with it. thalāthat- "three" through ‘asharat- "ten" require a following noun in the genitive plural, but disagree with the noun in gender, while taking the case required by the surrounding syntax. aḥada ‘asharah "eleven" through tis‘ata ‘asharah "nineteen" require a following noun in the accusative singular, agree with the noun in gender, and are invariable for case, except for ithnā ‘asharah/ithnay ‘ashara "twelve".
Note that this is just the introduction and doesn't purport to set out all of the rules... (!)
In addition to this, I think numbers really help with the soft skills of listening and producing - since the actual number of words is rather small but you can mix and match them in an unlimited number of ways. You can't just understand most of it and flub your way through the rest.
good ones! as an english speaker, some things that gave me difficulty in a second language (see if you can guess it):
- some digits are pronounced differently for counting than as part of a larger number
- some digits are pronounced differently when reciting the individual digits of a number, like in a phone number
- phrasing like "one hundred 2" means 120, not 102
- large numbers not grouped in thousands, but in ten thousands, ie having a single word for 10000, a word for 10^7, etc, so a valid spoken number is "13 thousand ten-thousand" -> 1.3 billion
You might think, what's the big deal? You need memorize around 40 words (i.e., the words for 0-9, 10-19, 20, 30, ..., 90, 100, 1000, million, etc.), plus a few rules, and then practice until you're fast.
I want to point out some difficulties that people learning English encounter. Every foreign language will have its own anomalies.
- In English, a year like 1776 is spoken as 17-76, not as one thousand seven hundred seventy six. And if you say it the long way, a native English speaker might even get a little thrown off.
- As an exception to the above, a year like 2001, is spoken as two thousand and one, not as 20-01.
- As an exception to the exception above, a year like 1701 is spoken as 17-oh-1, and not the long way.
- Times like 3:45 are spoken in numerous ways, like 3-45, quarter to 4, 15-45 if afternoon, or possibly even 15 to 4.
- When giving an address, 386 Maple is said as 3-86 Maple, not as 3-8-6 nor the long the way.
- You need to learn fractions and ordinal numbers: half, one-third, an-eighth, etc. You eat a third of a cake on the third floor, but half a cake on the second floor; i.e., different words in the case of number 2 (half vs second).
- When speaking a series of digits, 0 can be said as oh or zero; in many contexts, oh is much more common.
- Other exceptions and special cases with dates, prices, decimal points, measurements, ...