Hokkien numerals

Sorji (數字 Hokkien numerals)

	1	2	3 / 三	4 / 四	5 / 五	6 / 六	7 / 七	8 / 八	9 / 九	10 / 十
Peh	cit (蜀)	nng (兩)	svaf	six	go	lak	chid	pøeq	kao	zap
Buun	id (一)	ji (二)	safm	sux	gvor	liok		pad	kiuo	sip

Numbers in Taiwanese

There are two sets of numbers in Taiwanese: colloquial style (peh) and the literary style (buun). The colloquial readings come from Ancient Han Chinese/Old Chinese (Kor Harnguo) (ca. 0 BCE/CE), whereas the literary readings come from Han Chinese during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) (Kixntai Harnguo). Nowadays, the peh style is used most, whereas the buun style is mostly used to recite telephone numbers (tiexn'oe). See Buun-peh-i-thak for more info.

Cardinal numbers

cit, nng, svaf, six, go, lak, chid, peq, kao, zap

The colloquial system is usually used for counting objects and will usually be followed by a classifier and thus obey tone sandhi. For example, cidtaai tiexnsi 🔊 (one television), or Cidboea Hii (one fish).

For numbers greater than ten, id and ji from the literary set are used in the lower positions. For example, 220 is nngxpahji and 1,100 is cidzheng'id.

ji-zap-kao-taai chiaf 🔊

29 cars

nngxpaq, nngxchiefn, nngxban 🔊

200, 2000, 20,000

Ordinal numbers

b⃟ khoxng, id, ji, safm, sux, gvor, liok, chid, pad, kiuo, sip

Telephone digits are grouped according to certain rules and tone sandhi is applied.

For example, 3945068 🔊 is read: safm kiuo sux, gvor khoxng, liok pad (see Khax Tiexn'oe).

• Ordinal numbers: only "1st" and "2nd" use literary, the rest use colloquial

  • texid, texji 🔊 第一, 第二

    First, second

    texsvaf, texsix, texgo 🔊

    Third, fourth, fifth, etc