Hokkien numerals

Template:TtsX (數字; Numeral system)

1 2 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 /
Peh cit () nng () svaf six go lak chid pøeq kao zap
Buun id () ji () 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