Chinese numerals

 ( Numerals ) 

Chinese numerals are words and characters used to denote in written Chinese.

Today, speakers of Chinese languages use three written : the system of Arabic numerals used worldwide, and two indigenous systems. The more familiar indigenous system is based on Chinese characters that correspond to numerals in the spoken language. These may be shared with other languages of the Chinese cultural sphere such as Korean numerals, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Most people and institutions in China primarily use the Arabic or mixed Arabic-Chinese systems for convenience, with traditional Chinese numerals used in finance, mainly for writing amounts on cheques, banknotes, some ceremonial occasions, some boxes, and on commercials.

The other indigenous system consists of the Suzhou numerals, or huama, a positional system, the only surviving form of the rod numerals. These were once used by Chinese mathematicians, and later by merchants in Chinese markets, such as those in Hong Kong until the 1990s, but were gradually supplanted by Arabic numerals.

corresponds to the SI prefix [[pico-]].
     

(S) corresponds to the SI prefix [[nano-]].
     

corresponds to the SI prefix [[yocto-]].
     

corresponds to the SI prefix [[zepto-]].
     

The Republic of China (Taiwan) defined as the translation for mega and as the translation for tera. This translation is widely used in official documents, academic communities, informational industries, etc. However, the civil broadcasting industries sometimes use to represent "megahertz".

Today, the governments of both China and Taiwan use phonetic transliterations for the SI prefixes. However, the governments have each chosen different Chinese characters for certain prefixes. The following table lists the two different standards together with the early translation.

In Mandarin, the multiplier labels=no ( liǎng) is often used rather than for all numbers 200 and greater with the "2" numeral (although as noted earlier this varies from dialect to dialect and person to person). Use of both or are acceptable for the number 200. When writing in the Cantonese dialect, is used to represent the "2" numeral for all numbers. In the Min Nan dialect of Chaozhou (Teochew dialect), ( no⁶) is used to represent the "2" numeral in all numbers from 200 onwards. Thus:

For the numbers 11 through 19, the leading 'one' (labels=no) is usually omitted. In some dialects, like Shanghainese, when there are only two significant digits in the number, the leading 'one' and the trailing zeroes are omitted. Sometimes, the one before "ten" in the middle of a number, such as 213, is omitted. Thus:

Notes:

1. Nothing is ever omitted in large and more complicated numbers such as this.

In certain older texts like the Protestant Bible, or in poetic usage, numbers such as 114 may be written as 100 10 4 ().

Outside of Taiwan, digits are sometimes grouped by instead of thousands. Hence it is more convenient to think of numbers here as in groups of four, thus 1,234,567,890 is regrouped here as 12,3456,7890. Larger than a myriad, each number is therefore four zeroes longer than the one before it, thus 10000 × = . If one of the numbers is between 10 and 19, the leading 'one' is omitted as per the above point. Hence (numbers in parentheses indicate that the number has been written as one number rather than expanded):

In Taiwan, pure Arabic numerals are officially always and only grouped by thousands. Unofficially, they are often not grouped, particularly for numbers below 100,000. Mixed Arabic-Chinese numerals are often used in order to denote myriads. This is used both officially and unofficially, and come in a variety of styles:

Interior zeroes before the unit position (as in 1002) must be spelt explicitly. The reason for this is that trailing zeroes (as in 1200) are often omitted as shorthand, so ambiguity occurs. One zero is sufficient to resolve the ambiguity. Where the zero is before a digit other than the units digit, the explicit zero is not ambiguous and is therefore optional, but preferred. Thus:

Percentages are constructed similarly, using as the denominator. (The number 100 is typically expressed as , like the English 'one hundred'. However, for percentages, is used on its own.)

Because percentages and other fractions are formulated the same, Chinese are more likely than not to express 10%, 20% etc. as 'parts of 10' (or , , etc. i.e. 十分之一; , 十分之二; , etc.) rather than "parts of 100" (or , , etc. i.e. 百分之十; , 百分之二十; , etc.)

In Taiwan, the most common formation of percentages in the spoken language is the number per hundred followed by the word , a contraction of the Japanese パーセント; , itself taken from 'percent'. Thus 25% is 二十五趴; .

Decimal numbers are constructed by first writing the whole number part, then inserting a point (), and finally the fractional part. The fractional part is expressed using only the numbers for 0 to 9, similarly to English.

functions as a number and therefore requires a measure word. For example: .
     

Chinese uses in certain situations in which English would use Ordinal number. For example, labels=no (literally "three Storey") means "third floor" ("second floor" in British ). Likewise, c=二十一世纪/二十一世紀 (literally "twenty-one century") is used for "21st century".Yip, Po-Ching; Rimmington, Don, Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar, Routledge, 2004, p. 12.

Numbers of years are commonly spoken as a sequence of digits, as in t= ("two zero zero one") for the year 2001.Yip, Po-Ching; Rimmington, Don, Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar, Routledge, 2004, p. 13. Names of months and days (in the Western system) are also expressed using numbers: t= ("one month") for January, etc.; and t= ("week one") for Monday, etc. There is only one exception: Sunday is t=, or informally t=, both literally "week day". When meaning "week", "t=" p=xīngqī and "first=t" c= are interchangeable. "t=" c= or "t=" c= means "day of worship". Chinese Catholics call Sunday "t=" c=, "Lord's day".

Full dates are usually written in the format 2001年1月20日 for January 20, 2001 (using t= "year", t= "month", and t= "day") – all the numbers are read as cardinals, not ordinals, with no leading zeroes, and the year is read as a sequence of digits. For brevity the c=, c= and c= may be dropped to give a date composed of just numbers. For example "6-4" in Chinese is "six-four", short for "month six, day four" i.e. June Fourth, a common Chinese shorthand for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests (because of the violence that occurred on June 4). For another example 67, in Chinese is sixty seven, short for year nineteen sixty seven, a common Chinese shorthand for the Hong Kong 1967 leftist riots.

Some of the bronze script numerals such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, and 13 became part of the system of rod numerals.

In this system, horizontal rod numbers are used for the tens, thousands, hundred thousands etc. It is written in Sunzi Suanjing that "one is vertical, ten is horizontal". Chinese Wikisource 孫子算經: , , , , .

The counting rod numerals system has place value and decimal numerals for computation, and was used widely by Chinese merchants, mathematicians and astronomers from the Han dynasty to the 16th century.

Alexander Wylie, Christian missionary to China, in 1853 already refuted the notion that "the Chinese numbers were written in words at length", and stated that in ancient China, calculation was carried out by means of counting rods, and "the written character is evidently a rude presentation of these". After being introduced to the rod numerals, he said "Having thus obtained a simple but effective system of figures, we find the Chinese in actual use of a method of notation depending on the theory of local value i.e., several centuries before such theory was understood in Europe, and while yet the science of numbers had scarcely dawned among the Arabs."Alexander Wylie, Jottings on the Sciences of the Chinese, North Chinese Herald, 1853, Shanghai

During the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty dynasties (after Arabic numerals were introduced into China), some Chinese mathematicians used Chinese numeral characters as positional system digits. After the Qing period, both the Chinese numeral characters and the Suzhou numerals were replaced by Arabic numerals in mathematical writings.

• Numbers in Chinese culture
• Celestial stem