Wednesday, 24 March 2021

Formal Chinese numbers

Something my dad explained to me when I was a kid that I still remember. I first saw the "complicated" Chinese character for one on currency: 壹. I asked my dad why didn't they just write: ? He said, it's to forestall forgery or alteration, just as one spells out an amount in words on cheques in English. Being an accountant, he knew all that.

Here are the formal numbers from 0 to 10 in Chinese:  . Pronunciation is identical. Here's the blog post I found which gives more details.

Right, that's 萬 bucks you owe me

 

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