All About Numbers In Vietnamese Language – From 1 to over 100 – A Creative Approach

Learn Vietnamese with Tieng Viet Oi
 

Days in a week

Did you know, that days in a week and months in a year are numbered in Vietnamese? That’s right! Monday is Thứ Hai (day 2), Tuesday is Thứ Ba (day three), January is Tháng Một (month 1) and February is Tháng Hai (month 2) and so on. I know it’s boring, but hey that makes it so much easier to learn names of the days and months isn’t it? Here’s a list of all days in a week and months in a year for you:

Monday: Thứ Hai – Tuesday: Thứ Ba – Wednesday: Thứ Tư

Thursday: Thứ Năm – Friday: Thứ Sáu – Saturday: Thứ Bảy – Sunday: Chủ Nhật

January: Tháng Một – February: Tháng Hai – March – Tháng Ba – April: Tháng Tư – May: Tháng Năm – June: Tháng Sáu – July: Tháng Bảy – August: Tháng Tám – September: Tháng Chín – October: Tháng Mười – November: Tháng Mười Một – December: Tháng Mười Hai

Now some of you may notice and ask: why do Wednesday and April not use the real number 4 in Vietnamese (which is “bốn”). What is “Tư”? The following video will tell you what Tư is:

Numbers from 11 to 99

Numbers from 11 to 99 are a bit harder to memorize because of the rules don’t you think? Basically three important rules you need to remember are:

1. Năm changes to Lăm from 15 to 99

2. Bốn changes to Tư from 24 to 94

3. Một changes to Mốt from 21 to 91

Below is our 3rd video of the series, introducing how to say numbers from 100 to millions.

How to you say 104?

I have a question: how to you say 104? From the lessons above, it should be một trăm linh bốn right? Correct! However, a lot of people including myself say một trăm linh tư for this one, even though the last two digits are 04 (four) which doesn’t fall into the range of 24 to 94.

Now, if you live in Vietnam, I believe you have to use money a lot. A bowl of Phở is around 40,000 VND (bốn mươi nghìn đồng). Motorbike parking fee is around 5,000 VND (năm nghìn đồng). A glass of red wine is maybe 160,000 VND (một trăm sáu mươi nghìn đồng). That’s such long words just to say the price of those items. Don’t worry, everyday speaking we Vietnamese skip a lot of words in saying numbers to make life easier. Below is our last video of the series which explains to you how to shorten numbers in everyday speaking.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *