Spanish Lessons

Dictionary

Verb Conjugator

Vocabulary

¡Practiquemos!

Resources

Numbers in Spanish

Want a quick answer? Try the Spanish Number Translator 

Let's start with the good news: there is (almost) no difference between the way that we write numbers in Spanish and the way we write them in English. The bad news is that when we use numbers in conversation, they definitely aren't pronounced the same way. But whether you've picked it up from "Sesame Street" or "Dora the Explorer" you probably already know at least a handful of Spanish numbers.

Numbers

Let's take a trip from "cero" (0) to "un trilión" (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) noticing some interesting quirks along the way.

The first 15 numbers (as well as zero) all have unique names:

After that the numbers come in combinations. You are literally saying "ten and six," "ten and seven," "ten and eight," etc.:

"Veinte" means "twenty" and from that point on the pattern is very similar to sixteen through nineteen: you are literally saying "twenty and one," "twenty and two," etc.

After "veinte" comes "treinta" and the same pattern is followed.

All of the numbers in forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties work the same way as in the thirties.

"One hundred" is "ciento" in Spanish.

You may have noticed there is no longer any "y." This is because the "y" is only used to separate the 10's place from the 1's place. If there is nothing in the 10's place, we don't use "y."

"Ciento" is followed by:

"One thousand" in Spanish is "mil." And we don't say "un mil;" it's simply "mil."

After the thousands comes the 10s and 100s of thousands:

Next, a thousand thousand is a million or "millón." When we move from one million to two million, the "millón" becomes "millones":

Now things get a little weird. Adding three zeros to a million in English gets us to a billion. But in Spanish it's a "mil millón," or a thousand million*. This throws the rest of the chart out of synch with what we might expect as well:

If you still have questions about numbers, try out the Spanish Number Translator 

Numbers as Adjectives

If you're simply counting (like in "Hide and Seek" while your friends are hiding) the list above is accurate. However, much of the time when we use a number we follow it up with a noun. E.g. "six cars," "24 tables," "38 houses," etc. When we do this we're actually using the number as an adjective and some interesting things need to happen.

First of all "Uno" gets shortened to "Un" when it comes before a masculine noun, and likewise numbers ending in "-uno" are shortened to "-ún" (note the accent mark). "Ciento" is also shortened to "Cien" when (and only when) we're dealing with exactly 100 of something. For example:

Secondly, as with other adjectives, we need to make our numbers agree in gender with the nouns that they modify. However, this only happens with numbers ending in "-uno" and words ending in "-ientos" (all of the "hundreds" words from 200 to 900). For example:

Every part of a number that can agree with the gender of the noun should agree. For example 654,321 tables would be written out as "seiscientas cincuenta y cuatro mil trescientas veintiuna mesas."

Decimal Points and Commas

You may have noticed the strange looking decimal points in the right hand column above. This is not a typo. The majority of Spanish-speaking countries do the opposite of English-speaking countries when it comes to decimal points and grouping thousands: commas are used for decimal points and periods are used to separate the groups of zeros. The number "21.7" would be written "21,7" in Spanish and would be read "veintiuno punto siete."

Ordinal Numbers

To put things in order (such as the order in which runners finish a race) we use ordinals:

• When used as adjectives, all of the ordinals agree in gender with the noun they modify, therefore the "-o" ending changes to an "-a" with feminine nouns. For example; "la segunda casa," "su tercera novia," "mi última tarea."
• The ordinals "primero" and "tercero" are shortened to "primer" and "tercer" when used with masculine nouns. For example; "en primer lugar," "en tercer grado." This is only true of "primero" and "tercero."
• Spanish ordinals can be expressed in shorthand -- 1º, 2º, 3º, etc. -- much like we do in English -- 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. (1ª, 2ª, 3ª, etc. if feminine)

Fractions

We express fractions the following way:

From "un cuarto" on we're using the same words as we did for the ordinals.

Percentages

Precentages are written the same way in Spanish as they are in English. When spoken, "percent" is "por ciento."

Fun Numbers Facts

• When writing checks in Spanish it is acceptable (and a good idea) to write "un mil" rather than the grammatically correct "mil" to ensure that no one alters the check amount.
• Writing "two or three" in Spanish looks like this, "2 o 3," and could possibly be confused with "203." Because of this the "or" is accented to avoid confusion: "2 ó 3."