Numbers in English

The cardinal numbers (one, two, three, etc.) are adjectives referring to quantity, and the ordinal
numbers (first, second, third, etc.) refer to distribution.

Number Cardinal Ordinal

1 one first
2 two second
3 three third
4 four fourth
5 five fifth
6 six sixth
7 seven seventh
8 eight eighth
9 nine ninth
10 ten tenth
11 eleven eleventh
12 twelve twelfth
13 thirteen thirteenth
14 fourteen fourteenth
15 fifteen fifteenth
16 sixteen sixteenth
17 seventeen seventeenth
18 eighteen eighteenth
19 nineteen nineteenth
20 twenty twentieth
21 twenty-one twenty-first
22 twenty-two twenty-second
23 twenty-three twenty-third
24 twenty-four twenty-fourth
25 twenty-five twenty-fifth
26 twenty-six twenty-sixth
27 twenty-seven twenty-seventh
28 twenty-eight twenty-eighth
29 twenty-nine twenty-ninth
30 thirty thirtieth
31 thirty-one thirty-first
40 forty fortieth
50 fifty fiftieth
60 sixty sixtieth
70 seventy seventieth
 Number Cardinal Ordinal
80 eighty eightieth
90 ninety ninetieth
100 one hundred hundredth
500 five hundred five hundredth
1,000 one thousand thousandth
1,500 one thousand five hundred, or fifteen hundred one thousand five hundredth
100,000 one hundred thousand hundred thousandth
1,000,000 one million millionth

Examples

 There are twenty-five people in the room.

 He was the fourteenth person to win the award.
 Six hundred thousand people were left homeless after the earthquake.
 I must have asked you twenty times to be quiet.
 He went to Israel for the third time this year.

Reading decimals

Read decimals aloud in English by pronouncing the decimal point as "point", then read each digit
individually. Money is not read this way.

Written Said
0.5 point five
0.25 point two five
0.73 point seven three
0.05 point zero five
0.6529 point six five two nine
2.95 two point nine five

Reading fractions

Read fractions using the cardinal number for the numerator and the ordinal number for the
denominator, making the ordinal number plural if the numerator is larger than 1. This applies to
all numbers except for the number 2, which is read "half" when it is the denominator, and
"halves" if there is more than one.

Written Said
1/3 one third
3/4 three fourths
5/6 five sixths
1/2 one half
3/2 three halves
Pronouncing percentages

Percentages are easy to read aloud in English. Just say the number and then add the word
"percent".

Written Pronounced
5% five percent
25% twenty-five percent
36.25% thirty-six point two five percent
100% one hundred percent
400% four hundred percent

Reading sums of money

To read a sum of money, first read the whole number, then add the currency name. If there is a
decimal, follow with the decimal pronounced as a whole number, and if coinage has a name in
the currency, add that word at the end. Note that normal decimals are not read in this way. These
rules only apply to currency.

Written Spoken
25$ twenty-five dollars
52€ fifty-two euros
140₤ one hundred and forty pounds
forty-three dollars and twenty-five cents (shortened to "forty-three twenty-five" in
$43.25
everyday speech)
€12.66 twelve euros sixty-six
₤10.50 ten pounds fifty

Pronouncing measurements

Just read out the number, followed by the unit of measurement, which will often be abbreviated
in the written form.

Written Spoken
60m sixty meters
25km/h twenty-five kilometers per hour
11ft eleven feet
2L two liters
3tbsp three tablespoons
1tsp one teaspoon

Pronouncing years
Reading years in English is relatively complicated. In general, when the year is a four digit
number, read the first two digits as a whole number, then the second two digits as another whole
number. There are a few exceptions to this rule. Years that are within the first 100 years of a new
millenium can be read as whole numbers even though they have four digits, or they can be read
as two two-digit numbers. Millennia are always read as whole numbers because they would be
difficult to pronounce otherwise. New centuries are read as whole numbers of hundreds. We do
not use the word "thousand", at least not for reading years within the past 1000 years.

Years that have just three digits can be read as a three digit number, or as a one digit number
followed by a two-digit number. Years that are a two digit number are read as a whole number.
You can precede any year by the words "the year" to make your meaning clear, and this is
common for two and three digit years. Years before the year 0 are followed by BC, pronounced
as two letters of the alphabet.

Interestingly, these rules apply to reading street addresses as well.

Written Spoken
2014 twenty fourteen or two thousand fourteen
2008 two thousand eight
2000 two thousand
1944 nineteen forty-four
1908 nineteen o eight
1900 nineteen hundred
1600 sixteen hundred
1256 twelve fifty-six
1006 ten o six
866 eight hundred sixty-six or eight sixty-six
25 twenty-five
3000 BC three thousand BC
3250 BC thirty two fifty BC

How to say 0

There are several ways to pronounce the number 0, used in different contexts. Unfortunately,
usage varies between different English-speaking countries. These pronunciations apply to
American English.

Pronunciation Usage
Used to read the number by itself, in reading decimals, percentages, and phone
zero
numbers, and in some fixed expressions.
o (the letter
Used to read years, addresses, times and temperatures
name)
nil Used to report sports scores
nought Not used in the USA
Examples

Written Said
Three point zero four plus two point zero two makes five point
3.04+2.02=5.06
zero six.
There is a 0% chance of rain. There is a zero percent chance of rain.
The temperature is -20⁰C. The temperature is twenty degrees below zero.
You can reach me at 0171 390 You can reach me at zero one seven one, three nine zero, one
1062. zero six two
I live at 4604 Smith Street. I live at forty-six o four Smith Street
He became king in 1409. He became king in fourteen o nine.
I waited until 4:05. I waited until four o five.
The score was 4-0. The score was four nil.
There are two common ways of telling the time.

1) Say the hour first and then the minutes. (Hour + Minutes)

 6:25 - It's six twenty-five

 8:05 - It's eight O-five (the O is said like the letter O)
 9:11 - It's nine eleven
 2:34 - It's two thirty-four
2) Say the minutes first and then the hour.  (Minutes + PAST / TO + Hour)

For minutes 1-30 we use PAST after the minutes.

For minutes 31-59 we use TO after the minutes.

 2:35 - It's twenty-five to three

 11:20 - It's twenty past eleven
 4:18 - It's eighteen past four
 8:51 - It's nine to nine
 2:59 - It's one to three

When it is 15 minutes past the hour we normally say: (a) quarter past

 7:15 - It's (a) quarter past seven

When it is 15 minutes before the hour we normally say: a quarter to

 12:45 - It's (a) quarter to one

When it is 30 minutes past the hour we normally say: half past

 3:30 - It's half past three (but we can also say three-thirty)

O'clock

We use o'clock when there are NO minutes.

 10:00 - It's ten o'clock

 5:00 - It's five o'clock
 1:00 - It's one o'clock

Sometimes it is written as 9 o'clock (the number + o'clock)

12:00

For 12:00 there are four expressions in English.

 twelve o'clock
 midday = noon
  midnight

Asking for the Time

The common question forms we use to ask for the time right now are:

 What time is it?

 What is the time?

A more polite way to ask for the time, especially from a stranger is:

 Could you tell me the time please?

The common question forms we use to ask at what time a specific event will happen are:

What time...?

When...?

 What time does the flight to New York leave?

 When does the bus arrive from London?
 When does the concert begin?

Giving the Time

We use It is or It's to respond to the questions that ask for the time right now.

 It is half past five (5:30).

 It's ten to twelve (11:50)

We use the structure AT + time when giving the time of a specific event.

 The bus arrives at midday (12:00).

 The flight leaves at a quarter to two (1:45).
 The concert begins at ten o'clock. (10:00)

We can also use subject pronouns in these responses.

 It arrives at midday (12:00).

 It leaves at a quarter to two (1:45).
 It begins at ten o'clock. (10:00)
AM vs. PM

We don't normally use the 24-hour clock in English.

We use a.m. (am) for the morning and p.m. (pm) for the afternoon and night.

3am = Three o'clock in the morning.

3pm = Three o'clock in the afternoon.

Tips for telling the time properly in English

Telling the time in English is more complicated than just reading some numbers from the clock.
We have lots of expressions and phrases related to telling the time that you need to know if you
want to talk about time accurately in English. Make sure you can tell the time properly in English
with these five simple tips.

Choose which clock to use

There are two ways of telling the time in English – the 12-hour clock and the 24-hour clock. In
the 24-hour clock, we use the numbers from 0 – 23 to indicate the hours. In the 12-hour clock,
we use 1 – 12. To tell the difference between morning and afternoon, we use ‘am’ after the time
in the morning and ‘pm’ after the time in the afternoon. Remember, ‘pm’ starts at 12:00 near
lunchtime.
Only use o’clock up to 12

We only use ‘o’clock’ for precise hours. You can say ‘eight o’clock’ at 08:00 but not at 08:01.
We only use ‘o’clock’ when we are telling time using the 12-hour clock so English speakers
would never say ’13 o’clock’.

We only have a ‘half past, never a ‘half to’.

Unlike many other languages, in English we use ‘half past’ to talk about any time ending in
‘:30’. After that we start looking forward and use ‘to’. So, 6:30 is ‘half past six’ and 6:31 is 29
minutes to seven. We also only use ‘half past’ with the 12-hour clock.

Use ‘quarter’ for 15 minutes before or after the hour

At X:15 and X:45, we can use the expressions ‘quarter past’ and ‘quarter to’. Using these
expressions sounds much more natural to a native speaker than ‘fifteen minutes past’ or ‘fifteen
minutes to’. As with ‘half past’ we can only use these with the 12-hour clock.

Use ‘at’ for specific times and ‘in’ for periods of time

We use ‘at’ to talk about any specific time. For example “I’ll meet you at six pm.” Special
specific times of the day and night have their own names in English, we use ‘at’ with these, to.
‘Midday’, ‘midnight’, ‘dawn’ and ‘dusk’ all need ‘at’ before them. However, if we are talking
about a period of the day, we use ‘in’. So, we would say “in the morning”, “in the afternoon”, “in
the evening”, or “in the night”. There is one exception to this rule in that we can also say “at
night”.
How to ask which day of the week 

If you want to ask what day of the week it is, say:

What day is it today?  or What’s the day today?

What day is it tomorrow? or What’s the day tomorrow?

 
To answer these questions you can say,

It’s Monday today.  or Today is Monday.

It’s Tuesday tomorrow. or Tomorrow is Tuesday.

How to ask the date

If you want to ask what the date is, you can say:

What’s the date today?  or What’s today’s date?

What’s the date tomorrow? or What’s tomorrow’s date?

You can answer by saying:

It’s 27th September. / Today is 27th September.

Tomorrow is September 28th.

How to say the date

When we say dates in English we use ordinal numbers. So for 1 January, we don’t say the
cardinal number ‘one’ but we say ‘first’. And we say ‘the’ before the number followed by ‘of’.
For example,

It’s the first of January.

It’s also possible to invert the month and day. For example,

It’s January first. 

In this case you don’t need to say ‘the’ and ‘of’.

From 13 to 19 we continue to add -th to create the ordinal numbers (thirteenth, fourteenth, etc.)

While from 21 to 31 the ordinal numbers end according to the ending of the second number. For
example,

21 – twenty-first

22 – twenty-second

23 – twenty-third
24 – twenty-fourth

How to write the date

When we write a date we don’t need to add ‘the’ and ‘of’ as we do when we speak. For example:

It’s the first of January – speaking

It’s 1st January – writing

As you can see, you don’t need to write the number but we usually add the last two letters of the
ordinal number. For example:

First – 1st

Second – 2nd

Third – 3rd

Fourth – 4th

How to say the year

There are two ways to say the year in English. Until the year 2000, every year was pronounced
as two numbers. For example,

1485 – fourteen eighty-five

1750 – seventeen fifty

1900 – nineteen hundred

For the first years of previous centuries, we add ‘0’. For example:

1801 – eighteen o one

While for the first ten years of the 21st century, we use the word ‘thousand’. For example:

2000 – two thousand

2006 – two thousand six

From the year 2010 onwards you can say two numbers again. For example,

2012 – twenty twelve

However, some people continue to use ‘thousand’ and say:

2012 – two thousand twelve

Centuries

When we refer to a century in English, we use ordinal numbers. For example,

1800-1900 = the nineteenth century

1900-2000 = the twentieth century

And centuries are divided into ten decades. A decade is a period of ten years.

Historical dates

When you talk about a year in the distant past, you can use B.C. and A.D. The letters B.C. mean
‘before Christ’. For example,

The first Olympic Games were in 776 B.C.

A.D. means ‘Anno Domini’ – the year of the Lord, marking the birth of Christ. So this year is
2019 A.D. However, it’s only necessary to add A.D. when it is unclear which time period you’re
referring to. For example,

Romulus Augustulus was the last Roman Emperor from 475-476 A.D.