Showing posts with label financial transactions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial transactions. Show all posts

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: 一? 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:  零壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖拾. Pronunciation is identical. Here's the blog post I found which gives more details.

Right, that's 壹萬 bucks you owe me