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.

Colloquial

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

These are generally used for counting objects and will usually be followed by a classifier and thus obey tone sandhi. For example, cidtaai tiexnsi 🔊 (one television), or Cidbøea Hii (one fish).

Note: ji 🔊 is used in the ones, tens and hundreds place, whereas nng is used for multiples of numbers 100 and greater. This is analogous to the use of 二 and 兩 in Mandarin.

ji-zap-kao-taai chiaf 🔊

29 cars

nngxpaq, nngxchiefn, nngxban 🔊

200, 2000, 20,000

Literary

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 🔊

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

  • tøexid, tøexji 🔊 第一, 第二

    First, second

    tøexsvaf, tøexsix, tøexgo 🔊

    Third, fourth, fifth, etc