Professional Documents
Culture Documents
in legal translation
Cardinal Numbers
===============
Cardinal numbers are normally used when you:
count things:
I have two brothers. There are thirty-one days in January.
give your age:
I am thirty-three years old. My sister is twenty-seven years old.
give your telephone number:
Our phone number is two-six-three, three-eight-four-seven. (4812240)
give years:
She was born in nineteen seventy-five (1975). America was
discovered in fourteen ninety-two
Notice how we divide the year into two parts. This is the form for
year up to 1999. For the year 2000 and on, we say two thousand
(2000), two thousand and one (2001), two thousand and two (2002)
etc.
Ordinal Numbers
You can normally create Ordinal numbers by adding -TH to the end of a
Cardinal Number.
Ordinal numbers are normally used when you:
give a date:
My birthday is on the 27th of January. (Twenty-seventh of January)
put things in a sequence or order:
Liverpool came second in the football league last year.
give the floor of a building:
His office is on the tenth floor.
have birthdays:
He had a huge party for his twenty-first birthday.
Cardinal Numbers
1 - one
2 - two
3 - three
4 - four
5 - five
6 - six
7 - seven
8 - eight
9 - nine
10 - ten
11 - eleven
12 - twelve
13 - thirteen
14 - fourteen
15 - fifteen
16 - sixteen
17 - seventeen
18 - eighteen
19 - nineteen
20 - twenty
21 - twenty-one
22 - twenty-two
23 - twenty-three
30 - thirty
40 - forty
50 - fifty
60 - sixty
70 - seventy
80 - eighty
90 - ninety
100 - one hundred*
101 - one hundred and one
200 - two hundred
300 - three hundred
1000 - one thousand
1,000,000 - one million
10,000,000 - ten million
Notes
======
Instead of saying One Hundred, you can say A
hundred. e.g. (127) one hundred and twenty-seven
OR (127) a hundred and twenty-seven.
The same rule applies for one thousand (a thousand)
and one million (a million)
Notice that you need to use a hyphen (-) when you
write the numbers between 21 and 99.
With long numbers, we usually divide them into
groups of three which are divided by a comma. e.g.
5000000 (5 million) is normally written as 5,000,000
Ordinal Numbers
1st - first
2nd - second
3rd - third
4th - fourth
5th - fifth
6th - sixth
7th - seventh
8th - eighth
9th - ninth
10th - tenth
11th - eleventh
12th - twelfth
13th - thirteenth
14th - fourteenth
15th - fifteenth
16th - sixteenth
17th - seventeenth
18th - eighteenth
19th - nineteenth
20th - twentieth
21st - twenty-first
22nd - twenty-second
23rd - twenty-third
30th - thirtieth
40th - fortieth
50th - fiftieth
60th - sixtieth
70th - seventieth
80th - eightieth
90th - ninetieth
100th - hundredth
101th - hundred and first
200th - two hundredth
300th - three hundredth
1,000th - thousandth
1,000,000th - ten millionth
The Number 0
=============
We normally say 'zero' for the number '0'.
BUT when we give our telephone number,
we often say O like the name of the letter O.
e.g. 505-1023 = five-O-five, one-O-two-three
Cardinal numbers
------------------------379 = three hundred and seventy nine
2,860 = two thousand eight hundred and sixty
5,084 = five thousand and eighty-four
470,000 = four hundred and seventy thousand
2,550,000 = two million, five hundred and fifty
thousand
3,000,000,000 = three billion
Note: There is no plurals after hundred, thousand,
million and billion when they are part of a number.
On their own, they can be plural, e.g. thousands
of people; millions of insects.
Percentages
-----------------26% = twenty-six per cent
More than 50% is the majority;
less than 50% is the minority.
Arithmetic
There are four basic processes for working out (= calculating) a
problem:
+ = addition e.g. 6 + 4 = 10 (six plus/and four equals/is ten)
- = subtraction e.g. 6-4 = 2 (six minus four equals/is two)
X = multiplication e.g. 6 X 4= 24 (six times / multiplied by four
equals/is twenty-four)
/ = division e.g. 4/2 = 2 (four divided by two equals/is two)
Saying 0
-------------This can be spoken in different ways in different contexts.
telephone number: 603 724 = six oh three, seven two four
(AmEng = six zero three)
mathematics: 0.7 = nought point seven, 6.02 = six point
oh two
57 fifty-seven
89 eighty-nine
622
1,963
2,840
110
1248
twelve forty-eight
2503
twenty-five oh three
:: Expressing millions.
1,412,605
one million four hundred
(and) twelve thousand six hundred (and)
five
2,760,300
two million seven hundred
(and) sixty thousand three hundred
Remember: The British use 'and' before
tens and ones but the Americans usually
leave the 'and' out.
Notes:
1. We use zero to express some numerical values such as temperatures,
taxes, and interest rates.
2.
2. We can pronounce "0" like the letter "o", when we are reading out
numbers figure by figure (e. g. telephone number, flight number, credit
card number, etc.)
Use a full stop (.) to separate the main part of a number from
the decimal part. 3.062 means 'three point nought six two'.
Say point to refer to the full stop. You can use a comma (,) in
large numbers to separate the hundreds, thousands, and
millions. 3,062 means 'three thousand and sixty-two'. In
British English, spaces are sometimes used instead of
commas (3 062).
Remember: Speakers of some other languages use (,) and
(.) in the opposite way - the commas for the decimals and the
points for thousands, millions, etc.
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