数字系统

Learn eleven words and you can say every number from 0 to 99: 零 (líng, 0), 一 (yī), 二 (èr), 三 (sān), 四 (sì), 五 (wǔ), 六 (liù), 七 (qī), 八 (bā), 九 (jiǔ), 十 (shí). Everything above ten is stated as arithmetic. Eleven is 十一 (shíyī, "ten-one"), twenty is 二十 (èrshí, "two-ten"), and twenty-one is 二十一 (èrshíyī, "two-ten-one"). There is no eleven, no twelve, no twenty; the words for those quantities are the construction itself.

This regularity is a real advantage for learners and, according to a line of research in numerical cognition, for Chinese-speaking children too. English-speaking children must memorize opaque forms like "eleven" and "fifteen" before the base-ten structure becomes visible; a child counting in Mandarin says "ten-one, ten-two, ten-three" and is doing place-value arithmetic from the start. Studies comparing early counting found Chinese-speaking children reliably counting past 40 at ages when English-speaking peers stalled in the teens, a gap researchers attribute to the transparency of the number words rather than to instruction.

Tone matters here more than almost anywhere else in the language, because the stakes are numeric. 四 (sì, fourth tone) is four; 十 (shí, second tone) is ten. A shaky tone pair turns 14 (十四 shísì) and 40 (四十 sìshí) into each other. Vendors in markets resolve the ambiguity with hand gestures: every number from one to ten has a one-handed sign, with six through ten using folded-finger shapes (six is thumb and pinky extended, like a "hang loose" sign) so that a whole price can be flashed with one hand over a pile of vegetables.

Western number names group by thousands: thousand, million, billion, each a factor of 1,000 apart. Chinese groups by ten thousands. The ladder runs 十 (shí, 10), 百 (bǎi, 100), 千 (qiān, 1,000), then pivots at 万 (wàn, 10,000) and climbs by reusing the small units: 十万 (shíwàn, 100,000), 百万 (bǎiwàn, 1,000,000), 千万 (qiānwàn, 10,000,000), until the next great unit 亿 (yì, 100,000,000). A billion is 十亿 (shíyì, "ten yi").

This is the single hardest mechanical skill in Chinese numbers, because the written digits are grouped in threes (Chinese uses the same comma convention as the West) while the spoken language parses them in fours. Reading 250,000 aloud requires mentally regrouping it as 25|0000 to get 二十五万 (èrshíwǔ wàn, "twenty-five wan"). Fluent bilinguals report that converting large figures between the two systems in real time, in a meeting or a negotiation, stays effortful for years. The practical workaround is to anchor a few landmarks: 万 is ten thousand, 十万 is a hundred thousand, 百万 is a million, 亿 is a hundred million.

万 also carries cultural weight as the conventional "myriad," the number that stands for uncountably many. 万岁 (wànsuì, "ten thousand years") was the acclamation reserved for the emperor. 万里长城 (Wànlǐ Chángchéng, "the ten-thousand-li long wall") is the Chinese name of the Great Wall. 万事如意 (wànshì rúyì, "may ten thousand matters go as you wish") is a standard New Year blessing. When a Chinese speaker says 万一 (wànyī, "one in ten thousand"), they mean "in the unlikely event that," the idiom for a long shot.

The rule underneath the table: 二 is the name of the numeral, 两 is the word for a quantity of two things. When you recite, calculate, or rank, the abstract numeral 二 does the work. The moment a measure word follows, quantifying actual objects, the language switches to 两. Saying 二个人 marks a speaker as a beginner instantly; 两个人 is the only natural form. No other Chinese numeral has this split. It survives because 两 is old and heavily used: it was already the pairing word in classical Chinese, and it still shows up in 两 (liǎng) as the traditional unit of weight, the "tael" of silver that priced everything in Ming and Qing commerce.

Ordinals are a prefix: 第 (dì) in front of any number makes it a ranking. 第一 (dìyī) is first, 第十五 (dì shíwǔ) is fifteenth. Fractions read denominator first: 三分之二 (sān fēn zhī èr, "of three parts, two") is two thirds. Percentages are the same machine with a fixed denominator of 100: 百分之八十 (bǎi fēn zhī bāshí) is 80%. Decimals use 点 (diǎn, "point"), with the digits after the point read one by one: 3.14 is 三点一四 (sān diǎn yī sì). Half is 半 (bàn), which slots in after a number and measure word: 一个半小时 (yí gè bàn xiǎoshí) is an hour and a half.

The discount system inverts Western habits and trips up every visitor during a sale. 打折 (dǎzhé) means to discount, but the number states what you pay, in tenths of the original price. 打八折 (dǎ bā zhé) is "pay eight tenths," a 20% discount. 打五折 (dǎ wǔ zhé) is half price. A sign reading 三折 is not 30% off; it is 70% off, and seasoned shoppers scan for the low digits. Approximate quantities have their own small grammar: 几 (jǐ) before a measure word means "a few," a number plus 多 (duō) means "and change" (三十多岁, thirties), and 左右 (zuǒyòu, "left-right") after a figure means "approximately."

The everyday numerals are dangerously easy to alter with a brush stroke: 一 becomes 二 or 三 with an added line, 十 becomes 千 with a flick. So Chinese maintains a parallel set of 大写 (dàxiě, "capital") numerals, complex homophone characters that cannot be doctored: 壹 (yī), 贰 (èr), 叁 (sān), 肆 (sì), 伍 (wǔ), 陆 (liù), 柒 (qī), 捌 (bā), 玖 (jiǔ), 拾 (shí), with 佰 for hundred and 仟 for thousand. The set was standardized under the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, after a corruption scandal involving falsified grain accounts, and it has been in continuous financial use for six centuries.

These are not museum characters. Every bank deposit slip, official receipt, and paper contract in China still requires amounts in 大写 alongside the Arabic figures, and the denomination printed on every renminbi banknote is written in them: a 100-yuan note reads 壹佰圆. Learners do not need to produce these characters, but recognizing 壹贰叁 on a banknote or an invoice is the kind of literacy that makes the paper world of Chinese money suddenly legible.