Numbers are often some of the first words language learners are taught in a new language.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that learning numbers is easy.  In fact most people continue to count instinctively in their native language even after obtaining a high level of fluency in a second language.  Numbers always just seem to be easier for us to remember and use in our native language.

Over the next three posts I will present a review of some topics related to numbers in English.  I hope this will help to get you thinking and practicing your numbers in English.  If you can find ways to practice using English numbers in your everyday life, for example when you are out shopping try to think about how to say the price of something in English, or if you go to the gym and you are counting the number of time you lift a weight, or if you get money out from the bank, this will really help your number fluency.  There are many of way you can practice using English numbers everyday.  Over time, with practice, using numbers in English will come more and more naturally to you.

The English counting system is a base-10 number system in which all numbers between 1 and 9 are repeated over and over again.  (I mention this because there are other counting systems that are not base-10.)  Because English is a base-10 system it means learning the numbers between 1 and 9 is essential in order to learn to count in English.  There are two types of numbers in English ‘ordinal’ and ‘cardinal.’  Below is a table with the numbers 0-10 written in these two forms.  What is the difference between these two types of numbers?  Cardinal numbers are used to talk about quantity.  These numbers answer the questions ‘How many?’ and they are are also used for simple counting.  Ordinal numbers are used to talk about a thing’s position in a series in relation to other things, such as in a race, ‘first place, second place, and third place.’  These ordinal numbers are used to talk about the order of the race finishers.

Even though English is a base-10 system there are of course a few exceptions to this system.  As any English learner knows there is no number ‘one-teen’ or ‘two-teen’, we say “eleven” and “twelve” in English, and then begin counting again in the base-10 system with “thirteen”, “fourteen”, etc.  Why is this?  Well, before Napoleon’s France adopted the decimal system most people based their counting systems on a base-12 system, including the English speaking world.  A base-12 system might be considered more difficult to work with today, but it is in fact more flexible than a base-10 system, which is why so many societies used a base-12 system in the past.  (For example: Ten can be divided by itself, five and two, where as twelve, can be divided by itself, six, four, three and two; giving two more possibilities including thirds and quarters which are very useful in everyday life.)  Napoleon thought a base-10 system was better though and that changed how much of Europe viewed numbers from then forward.  The names of the modern day number “eleven” and “twelve” in English come from the Old Norse  language (which used a base-12 system)  “eleven” was ‘elleve’ and “twelve” was ‘tolv’.

The following table looks at ordinal and cardinal numbers in the teens (numbers 11-19), as well as a few numbers in the twenties (20-29), thirties (30-39), forties (40-49), fifties, (50-59), sixties (60-69), seventies (70-79), eighties (80-89), and nineties (90-99).  This should help you see the pattern of this base-10 system.  Tomorrow we will turn our attention to number higher than 99!