General Literary Chinese from Scratch/An Introduction to Chinese Numbers

Moving from Arabic to Sinitic numerals is a bit difficult, so we're going to do a grammar lesson here. With Arabic numerals, place value is implied unless writing the number out in full: 1,234 One thousand, two hundred, and thirty four. When saying each number, the place value has to be specified. With Sinitic numerals, whether written or spoken, the place value is always specified: 一千二百三十四 This is the same number as before. Can you guess which character denotes place value is from the context? Great! Now you know where the value is placed, and what it means. The basic structure for numbers goes as follows: Number Place Number Place Number Place Place Number Character 二 千 三 百 二 十 有 五 Gloss two thousand three hundred two ten five Translation two thousand, three hundred [and] twenty-five 有 (or sometimes 又) is used to specify that there is a unit after the tens; in modern Chinese, this is omitted, and it is occasionally omitted in Literary Chinese as well, especially later on. It is only used when there is actually a units digit afterward. Therefore: 二千六百三十有九 二千六百三十 If we take away 九, we must also remove 有. Additionally, when handling zero (零, or more simply, 〇), leading zeroes are not noted. 二千六百零一 This would be 2,601. However... 二千零一 This would be 2,001. There is no need to specify the extra 0 like in English as long as the extra unit is filled in. Once we get to really large numbers, such as 萬 and 億, number representation becomes different. 二萬一千二百零一 This is 21,201. Notice that we don't use 十一萬 here - that is the place value rule in play. There is no "twenty-one thousand", only "twenty-thousand and one thousand". Likewise, to add a hundred thousand, we use 億.In modern Chinese, 億 is 100 million, rather than 100,000. When applied to nouns, they usually go before the noun: 一人 One person 二百人 Two hundred people 一萬人 Ten thousand people List of numbers The following are the numbers 0-9: 零一二三四五六七八九 0 (零) looks crazy because it is a later addition. However, it can be, and often is, simply written as 〇. Use either. Then for place value specification, these are the tens, hundredths, thousandths, ten thousandths, and hundred thousandths. 十百千萬億 When using tenths, you can contract 20, 30, and 40 into the following, wherein the tenth marker 十 is not required: 二十 -> 廿 20 三十 -> 卅 30 四十 -> 卌 40 Conversion! Now that you know the rules, it is time to start practicing them. Convert the following numbers into Sinitic numerals. 5 9 13 17 29 31 99 100 156 216 999 1,001 1,289 10,352 127,879 This is something you will need to practice! Try converting more numbers - and try to make constructions using characters from previous lessons! Cangjie codes 一: 一 (M) 千: 竹十 (HJ) 二: 一一 (MM) 百: 一日 (MA) 三: 一一一 (MMM) 十: 十 (J) 四: 田金 (WC) 有: 大月 (KB) 五: 一木一 (MDM) 又: 弓大 (NK) 六: 卜金 (YC) 九: 大弓 (KN) 零: 一月人戈戈 (MBOII) 萬: 廿田中月 (TWLB) 億: 人卜廿心 (OYTP) 人: 人 (O) 七: 十山 (JU) 八: 竹人 (HO) 廿: 廿 (T) 卅: 廿十 (TJ) 卌: 廿廿 (TT) Notes References Barnes, A. C., Starr, D., & Ormerod, G. (2009). Du’s handbook of classical Chinese grammar: An introduction to classical Chinese grammar. Alcuin Academics. Kroll, P. W., Baxter, W. H., Boltz, W. G., Knechtges, D. R., Lien, Y. E., Richter, A., Richter, M. L., & Warner, D. X. (2017). A student’s dictionary of classical and medieval Chinese (S. F. Teiser, M. Kern, & T. Brook, Eds; Revised edition). Brill.