Chinese numerals are words and characters used to denote
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
s in
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
.
Today, speakers of Chinese use three written
numeral system
A numeral system (or system of numeration) is a writing system for expressing numbers; that is, a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using Numerical digit, digits or other symbols in a consistent manner.
The same s ...
s: the system of
Arabic numerals
Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write Decimal, decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers ...
used worldwide, and two indigenous systems. The more familiar indigenous system is based on
Chinese character
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the Written Chinese, writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are k ...
s that correspond to
numerals in the spoken language. These may be shared with other languages of the
Chinese cultural sphere
The East Asian cultural sphere, also known as the Sinosphere, the Sinic world, the Sinitic world, the Chinese cultural sphere, the Chinese character sphere encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically ...
such as
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, and
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
. Most people and institutions in China primarily use the Arabic or mixed Arabic-Chinese systems for convenience, with traditional Chinese numerals used in finance, mainly for writing amounts on cheques, banknotes, some ceremonial occasions, some boxes, and on commercials.
The other indigenous system is the
Suzhou numerals
The Suzhou numerals, also known as ' (), is a numeral system used in China before the introduction of Arabic numerals. The Suzhou numerals are also known as ' (), ' (), ' (), ' () and ' ().
History
The Suzhou numeral system is the only survivin ...
, or ''huama'', a positional system, the only surviving form of the
rod numerals
Counting rods () are small bars, typically 3–14 cm long, that were used by mathematicians for calculation in ancient East Asia. They are placed either horizontally or vertically to represent any integer or rational number.
The written fo ...
. These were once used by Chinese mathematicians, and later by merchants in Chinese markets, such as those in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
until the 1990s, but were gradually supplanted by Arabic numerals.
Characters used to represent numbers
![Muyu-G209-1620km-5469-crop](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Muyu-G209-1620km-5469-crop.jpg)
The Chinese character numeral system consists of the
Chinese characters
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
used by the
Chinese written language
Written Chinese () comprises Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language. Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Rather, the writing system is roughly logosyllabic; that is, a character generally rep ...
to write spoken numerals. Similar to spelling-out numbers in English (e.g., "one thousand nine hundred forty-five"), it is not an independent system ''per se''. Since it reflects spoken language, it does not use the positional system as in
Arabic numerals
Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write Decimal, decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers ...
, in the same way that spelling out numbers in English does not.
Standard numbers
There are characters representing the numbers zero through nine, and other characters representing larger numbers such as tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands and hundred millions. There are two sets of characters for Chinese numerals: one for everyday writing, known as ''xiǎoxiě'' (), and one for use in commercial, accounting or financial contexts, known as ''dàxiě'' (). The latter arose because the characters used for writing numerals are geometrically simple, so simply using those numerals cannot prevent forgeries in the same way spelling numbers out in English would. A forger could easily change the everyday characters
三十 (30) to
五千 (5000) just by adding a few strokes. That would not be possible when writing using the financial characters
參拾 (30) and
伍仟 (5000). They are also referred to as "banker's numerals", "anti-fraud numerals", or "banker's anti-fraud numerals". For the same reason, rod numerals were never used in commercial records.
T denotes
Traditional Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese. The traditional characters had taken shapes since the clerical change and mostly remained in the same structure they took at ...
, while S denotes
Simplified Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, as prescribed by the ''Table of General Standard Chinese Characters''. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one o ...
.
Characters with regional usage
Large numbers
For numbers larger than 10,000, similarly to the
long and short scales
The long and short scales are two of several naming systems for integer powers of ten which use some of the same terms for different magnitudes.
For whole numbers smaller than 1,000,000,000 (109), such as one thousand or one million, the ...
in the West, there have been four systems in ancient and modern usage. The original one, with unique names for all powers of ten up to the 14th, is ascribed to the
Yellow Emperor
The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch or by his Chinese name Huangdi (), is a deity ('' shen'') in Chinese religion, one of the legendary Chinese sovereigns and culture heroes included among the mytho-historical Three Soverei ...
in the 6th century book by Zhen Luan, ''Wujing suanshu'' (Arithmetic in Five Classics). In modern Chinese only the second system is used, in which the same ancient names are used, but each represents a number 10,000 (
myriad
A myriad (from Ancient Greek grc, μυριάς, translit=myrias, label=none) is technically the number 10,000 (ten thousand); in that sense, the term is used in English almost exclusively for literal translations from Greek, Latin or Sinospher ...
,
萬 wàn) times the previous:
In practice, this situation does not lead to ambiguity, with the exception of 兆 (zhào), which means 10
12 according to the system in common usage throughout the Chinese communities as well as in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
and
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
, but has also been used for 10
6 in recent years (especially in mainland China for
megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes o ...
). To avoid problems arising from the ambiguity, the
PRC
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
government never uses this character in official documents, but uses 万亿 (wànyì) or 太 (tài, as the translation for ''tera'') instead. Partly due to this, combinations of 万 and 亿 are often used instead of the larger units of the traditional system as well, for example 亿亿 (yìyì) instead of 京. The
ROC government in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
uses 兆 (zhào) to mean 10
12 in official documents.
Large numbers from Buddhism
Numerals beyond 載 zǎi come from
Buddhist texts
Buddhist texts are those religious texts which belong to the Buddhist tradition. The earliest Buddhist texts were not committed to writing until some centuries after the death of Gautama Buddha. The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts a ...
in
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
, but are mostly found in ancient texts. Some of the following words are still being used today, but may have transferred meanings.
Small numbers
The following are characters used to denote small
order of magnitude
An order of magnitude is an approximation of the logarithm of a value relative to some contextually understood reference value, usually 10, interpreted as the base of the logarithm and the representative of values of magnitude one. Logarithmic dis ...
in Chinese historically. With the introduction of SI units, some of them have been incorporated as SI prefixes, while the rest have fallen into disuse.
Small numbers from Buddhism
SI prefixes
In the People's Republic of China, the early translation for the
SI prefix
The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. E ...
es in 1981 was different from those used today. The larger (兆, 京, 垓, 秭, 穰) and smaller Chinese numerals (微, 纖, 沙, 塵, 渺) were defined as translation for the SI prefixes as ''mega'', ''giga'', ''tera'', ''peta'', ''exa'', ''micro'', ''nano'', ''pico'', ''femto'', ''atto'', resulting in the creation of yet more values for each numeral.
[1981 Gazette of the State Council of the People's Republic of China]
No. 365
, page 575, Table 7: SI prefixes
The Republic of China (Taiwan) defined 百萬 as the translation for ''mega'' and 兆 as the translation for ''tera''. This translation is widely used in official documents, academic communities, informational industries, etc. However, the civil broadcasting industries sometimes use
兆赫 to represent "
megahertz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or Cycle per second, cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, me ...
".
Today, the governments of both China and Taiwan use phonetic transliterations for the SI prefixes. However, the governments have each chosen different Chinese characters for certain prefixes. The following table lists the two different standards together with the early translation.
Reading and transcribing numbers
Whole numbers
Multiple-digit numbers are constructed using a multiplicative principle; first the digit itself (from 1 to 9), then the place (such as 10 or 100); then the next digit.
In Mandarin, the multiplier (''liǎng'') is often used rather than (''èr'') for all numbers 200 and greater with the "2" numeral (although as noted earlier this varies from dialect to dialect and person to person). Use of both 兩 (''liǎng'') or 二 (''èr'') are acceptable for the number 200. When writing in the Cantonese dialect, 二 (''yi
6'') is used to represent the "2" numeral for all numbers. In the
southern Min
Southern Min (), Minnan (Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ( ...
dialect of Chaozhou (
Teochew), 兩 (''no
6'') is used to represent the "2" numeral in all numbers from 200 onwards. Thus:
For the numbers 11 through 19, the leading "one" () is usually omitted. In some dialects, like Shanghainese, when there are only two significant digits in the number, the leading "one" and the trailing zeroes are omitted. Sometimes, the one before "ten" in the middle of a number, such as 213, is omitted. Thus:
Notes:
# Nothing is ever omitted in large and more complicated numbers such as this.
In certain older texts like the
Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
or in poetic usage, numbers such as 114 may be ''written'' as
00 0 ().
Outside of Taiwan, digits are sometimes grouped by
myriad
A myriad (from Ancient Greek grc, μυριάς, translit=myrias, label=none) is technically the number 10,000 (ten thousand); in that sense, the term is used in English almost exclusively for literal translations from Greek, Latin or Sinospher ...
s instead of thousands. Hence it is more convenient to think of numbers here as in groups of four, thus 1,234,567,890 is regrouped here as 12,3456,7890. Larger than a myriad, each number is therefore four zeroes longer than the one before it, thus 10000 × () = (). If one of the numbers is between 10 and 19, the leading "one" is omitted as per the above point. Hence (numbers in parentheses indicate that the number has been written as one number rather than expanded):
In Taiwan, pure Arabic numerals are officially always and only grouped by thousands. Unofficially, they are often not grouped, particularly for numbers below 100,000. Mixed Arabic-Chinese numerals are often used in order to denote myriads. This is used both officially and unofficially, and come in a variety of styles:
Interior zeroes before the unit position (as in 1002) must be spelt explicitly. The reason for this is that trailing zeroes (as in 1200) are often omitted as shorthand, so ambiguity occurs. One zero is sufficient to resolve the ambiguity. Where the zero is before a digit other than the units digit, the explicit zero is not ambiguous and is therefore optional, but preferred. Thus:
Fractional values
To construct a fraction, the
denominator
A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...
is written first, followed by , then the literary possessive particle , and lastly the
numerator
A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...
. This is the opposite of how fractions are read in English, which is numerator first. Each half of the fraction is written the same as a whole number. For example, to express "two thirds", the structure "three parts of-this two" is used.
Mixed number
A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...
s are written with the whole-number part first, followed by , then the fractional part.
Percentages are constructed similarly, using as the denominator. (The number 100 is typically expressed as , like the English "one hundred". However, for percentages, is used on its own.)
Because percentages and other fractions are formulated the same, Chinese are more likely than not to express 10%, 20% etc. as "parts of 10" (or
1/
10,
2/
10, etc. i.e. ; ''shí fēnzhī yī'', ; ''shí fēnzhī èr'', etc.) rather than "parts of 100" (or
10/
100,
20/
100, etc. i.e. ; ''bǎi fēnzhī shí'', ; ''bǎi fēnzhī èrshí'', etc.)
In Taiwan, the most common formation of percentages in the spoken language is the number per hundred followed by the word ; ''pā'', a contraction of the Japanese ; ''pāsento'', itself taken from the English "percent". Thus 25% is ; ''èrshíwǔ pā''.
Decimal numbers are constructed by first writing the whole number part, then inserting a point (), and finally the fractional part. The fractional part is expressed using only the numbers for 0 to 9, similarly to English.
functions as a number and therefore requires a
measure word
In linguistics, measure words are words (or morphemes) that are used in combination with a numeral to indicate an amount of something represented by some noun.
Description
Measure words denote a unit or measurement and are used with mass nouns ...
. For example: .
Ordinal numbers
Ordinal numbers are formed by adding ("sequence") before the number.
The
Heavenly Stems
The ten Heavenly Stems or Celestial Stems () are a Chinese system of ordinals that first appear during the Shang dynasty, c. 1250 BC, as the names of the ten days of the week. They were also used in Shang-period ritual as names for dead family mem ...
are a traditional Chinese ordinal system.
Negative numbers
Negative numbers are formed by adding fù () before the number.
Usage
Chinese grammar
The grammar of Standard Chinese or Mandarin shares many features with other varieties of Chinese. The language almost entirely lacks inflection; words typically have only one grammatical form. Categories such as number (singular or plural) and ...
requires the use of
classifiers (measure words) when a numeral is used together with a noun to express a quantity. For example, "three people" is expressed as , "three ( particle) person", where / ' is a
classifier. There exist many
different classifiers, for use with different sets of nouns, although / is the most common, and may be used informally in place of other classifiers.
Chinese uses
cardinal number
In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. Th ...
s in certain situations in which English would use
ordinals. For example, (literally "three
story/storey") means "third floor" ("second floor" in British ). Likewise, (literally "twenty-one century") is used for "21st century".
Numbers of years are commonly spoken as a sequence of digits, as in ("two zero zero one") for the year 2001. Names of months and days (in the Western system) are also expressed using numbers: ("one month") for January, etc.; and ("week one") for Monday, etc. There is only one exception: Sunday is , or informally , both literally "week day". When meaning "week", "" and "" are interchangeable. "" or "" means "day of worship".
Chinese Catholics
The Catholic Church in China (called Tiānzhǔ Jiào, 天主敎, literally "Religion of the Lord of Heaven" after the Chinese term for the Christian God) has a long and complicated history. John of Montecorvino was the first Roman Catholic ...
call Sunday "" ', "Lord's day".
Full dates are usually written in the format 2001年1月20日 for January 20, 2001 (using "year", "month", and "day") – all the numbers are read as cardinals, not ordinals, with no leading zeroes, and the year is read as a sequence of digits. For brevity the , and may be dropped to give a date composed of just numbers. For example "6-4" in Chinese is "six-four", short for "month six, day four" i.e. June Fourth, a common Chinese shorthand for the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests
The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth ...
(because of the violence that occurred on June 4). For another example 67, in Chinese is sixty seven, short for year nineteen sixty seven, a common Chinese shorthand for the
Hong Kong 1967 leftist riots
The 1967 Hong Kong riots were large-scale anti-government riots that occurred in Hong Kong during British Hong Kong, British colonial rule. Beginning as a minor labour dispute, the demonstrations eventually escalated into protests against the ...
.
Counting rod and Suzhou numerals
![Chounumerals](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Chounumerals.svg)
In the same way that
Roman numerals
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...
were standard in ancient and medieval Europe for mathematics and commerce, the Chinese formerly used the
rod numerals
Counting rods () are small bars, typically 3–14 cm long, that were used by mathematicians for calculation in ancient East Asia. They are placed either horizontally or vertically to represent any integer or rational number.
The written fo ...
, which is a positional system. The Suzhou numerals () system is a variation of the
Southern Song
The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. ...
rod numerals. Nowadays, the ''huāmǎ'' system is only used for displaying prices in Chinese markets or on traditional handwritten invoices.
Hand gestures
![Chinesische](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Chinesische.Zahl.Sechs.jpg)
There is a common method of using of one hand to signify the numbers one to ten. While the five digits on one hand can easily express the numbers one to five, six to ten have special signs that can be used in commerce or day-to-day communication.
Historical use of numerals in China
![Counting board](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Counting_board.jpg)
Most Chinese numerals of later periods were descendants of the
Shang dynasty
The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and ...
oracle numerals of the 14th century BC. The
oracle bone script
Oracle bone script () is an ancient form of Chinese characters that were engraved on oracle bonesanimal bones or Turtle shell#Plastron, turtle plastrons used in pyromancy, pyromantic divination. Oracle bone script was used in the late 2nd millen ...
numerals were found on tortoise shell and animal bones. In early civilizations, the Shang were able to express any numbers, however large, with only nine symbols and a counting board though it was still not positional .
Some of the bronze script numerals such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, and 13 became part of the system of
rod numerals
Counting rods () are small bars, typically 3–14 cm long, that were used by mathematicians for calculation in ancient East Asia. They are placed either horizontally or vertically to represent any integer or rational number.
The written fo ...
.
In this system, horizontal rod numbers are used for the tens, thousands, hundred thousands etc. It's written in ''
Sunzi Suanjing
''Sunzi Suanjing'' () was a mathematical treatise written during 3rd to 5th centuries AD which was listed as one of the Ten Computational Canons during the Tang dynasty. The specific identity of its author Sunzi (lit. "Master Sun") is still ...
'' that "one is vertical, ten is horizontal".
The counting rod numerals system has place value and decimal numerals for computation, and was used widely by Chinese merchants, mathematicians and astronomers from the
Han dynasty
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
to the 16th century.
In 690 AD,
Empress Wǔ promulgated
Zetian characters, one of which was "〇". The word is now used as a synonym for the number zero.
Alexander Wylie, Christian missionary to China, in 1853 already refuted the notion that "the Chinese numbers were written in words at length", and stated that in ancient China, calculation was carried out by means of counting rods, and "the written character is evidently a rude presentation of these". After being introduced to the rod numerals, he said "Having thus obtained a simple but effective system of figures, we find the Chinese in actual use of a method of notation depending on the theory of local value
.e. place-value several centuries before such theory was understood in Europe, and while yet the science of numbers had scarcely dawned among the Arabs."
[Alexander Wylie, ''Jottings on the Sciences of the Chinese, North Chinese Herald, 1853, Shanghai'']
During the
Ming
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
and
Qing
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...
dynasties (after Arabic numerals were introduced into China), some Chinese mathematicians used Chinese numeral characters as positional system digits. After the Qing period, both the Chinese numeral characters and the Suzhou numerals were replaced by Arabic numerals in mathematical writings.
Cultural influences
Traditional Chinese numeric characters are also used in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
and
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
and were used in
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
before the 20th century. In vertical text (that is, read top to bottom), using characters for numbers is the norm, while in horizontal text, Arabic numerals are most common. Chinese numeric characters are also used in much the same formal or decorative fashion that Roman numerals are in Western cultures. Chinese numerals may appear together with Arabic numbers on the same sign or document.
See also
*
Chinese number gestures
Chinese number gestures are a method to signify the natural numbers one through ten using one hand. This method may have been developed to bridge the many varieties of Chinese—for example, the numbers 4 () and 10 () are hard to distinguish ...
*
Numbers in Chinese culture
Some numbers are believed by some to be auspicious or lucky (吉利, ) or inauspicious or unlucky (不吉, ) based on the Chinese word that the number sounds similar to. The numbers 3, 6, and 8 are generally considered to be lucky, while 4 is c ...
*
Chinese units of measurement
Chinese units of measurement, known in Chinese as the ''shìzhì'' ("market system"), are the traditional units of measurement of the Han Chinese. Although Chinese numerals have been decimal (base-10) since the Shang dynasty, Shang, several Chine ...
*
Chinese classifier
The modern varieties of Chinese, Chinese varieties make frequent use of what are called classifier (linguistics), classifiers or measure words. One use of classifiers is when a noun is qualified by a numeral (linguistics), numeral known as a noun ...
*
Chinese grammar
The grammar of Standard Chinese or Mandarin shares many features with other varieties of Chinese. The language almost entirely lacks inflection; words typically have only one grammatical form. Categories such as number (singular or plural) and ...
*
Japanese numerals
The Japanese numerals are the number names used in Japanese. In writing, they are the same as the Chinese numerals, and large numbers follow the Chinese style of grouping by 10,000. Two pronunciations are used: the Sino-Japanese (on'yomi) readings ...
*
Korean numerals
The Korean language has two regularly used sets of numerals: a native Korean system and Sino-Korean system. The native Korean number system is used for general counting, like counting up to 99. It is also used to count people, hours, objects ...
*
Vietnamese numerals
Historically Vietnamese has two sets of numbers: one is etymologically native Vietnamese; the other uses Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. In the modern language the native Vietnamese vocabulary is used for both everyday counting and mathematical purp ...
*
Celestial stem
The ten Heavenly Stems or Celestial Stems () are a Chinese system of ordinals that first appear during the Shang dynasty, c. 1250 BC, as the names of the ten days of the week. They were also used in Shang-period ritual as names for dead family mem ...
*
List of numbers in Sinitic languages
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chinese Numerals
Numerals
Chinese language
Chinese mathematics