CHAPTER 3
NUMBERS
Summary
1. In English, the way numbers are said and written is different from other languages
2. The use of the comma and full stop in numbers such as 3.15 and 10,000 is switched
3. Odd and even in other languages are usually written even and not even
4. We say two hundred or two thousand, but most other languages would add an ‘s’ to the hundred, thousand, etc
5. Fractions and decimals can be different and more complex in English
6. In English there are lots of ways of saying zero!
Number structure and pronunciation
The world over numbers are used to count, and to answer the questions, ‘how many’ or ‘how much’, although not all languages have two words for many and much, or use them in the same way. It is easy to take the numbering system for indicating quantity for granted and to assume that once you have taught it learners will know it. However, there are so many variations from practice in other countries and differences in the treatment of numbers in English that it may be worthwhile spending some time on this topic and revisit it regularly. For instance, why is it four and fourteen, but the ‘u’ is dropped from forty? Students will need to learn this.
Other numbers to be wary of include:
one, it can sound the same as won but is spelt differently.
two, which sounds like to or too, but has an odd ‘w’ in it.
three, tricky to pronounce owing to the lack of a ‘th’ sound in other languages.
four, which sounds like for but has an added ‘u’.
five, which has a ‘v’ in it, and this is pronounced as ‘w’ in many other European languages and is not a sound that occurs in many Asian languages.
six seems ok.
seven has a ‘v’ in it again.
eight sounds like ate but is spelt in an unusual way.
nine and ten are fine.
eleven has the ‘v’ again and an ‘l’ which Chinese learners can find almost impossible as they have not learnt the sound in their first language, so a bit of a tongue twister there; also ‘eleven’ is a special name- we do not say 'oneteen'.
twelve, same again for the v and tw is not a common diphthong; again, a special word- we do not say 'twoteen'.
You might think that once we were in the teens things would calm down a bit, but we say thirteen, not threeteen; I am sure we had our reasons, but would not like to speculate on what they were.
Fourteen seems fine.
but where has fiveteen gone? Ah, it is fifteen, so the ‘ve’ changes to an ‘f’ when it is followed by other letters, got it.
Sixteen, seventeen and eighteen seem fine, although how many learners with up to Entry 1 ESOL are ever going to remember the spelling for eight is a point worth making,
but nineteen, has that got an e, or do we drop it? In fact, we leave it in for nineteen and ninety but drop the e for ninth. That will be logical then!?
Not all languages have a specific name for the teens; in Chinese they have ten three for thirteen (Resource: Writing Numbers 1).
In English we say and use twenty, not twoty, thirty, not threety, forty not fourty, and fifty not fivety. We always insert an ‘and’ after the use of hundred, or if the hundred number is missing, for instance we say one hundred and one, and one thousand and one. Most languages do not use the ‘and’ here. We also say one hundred and one thousand (101,000). This is not the practice in other languages. Some languages have a discrete word for 100,000, such as 1 lehk in Hindi (Resource: Writing Numbers 2).
Separating numbers
Did you notice at the end of the last paragraph I used a comma to separate thousands off, such as 6,000 or 101,000? If these numbers are typed on a computer sometimes a gap is left instead, such as 6 000 (Resource: Writing Large Numbers). This is very confusing for ESOL learners; in many countries a full stop is used where the comma would be, but this looks like a decimal point to English users. In many European and other countries one million is written as 1.000.000, rather than using commas. Conversely, when writing money abroad a comma is often placed between the small and large parts of currency, so whereas in Britain we will see ‘£3.65’, and a decimal point separates the pounds from the pence, across Europe a comma separates the euros from the cents: E3,65 (Resource: Writing Money).
Odd and Even
It is important that learners know which numbers are odd and which are even, and you might think that this would be straight forward. I put it up on an online translation facility on the interactive white board in my classroom and guess what? In Spanish they do not say ‘odd and even’, they say ‘even and not even’ (‘par e impar’), so the Spanish speaking learners were doing the task incorrectly and had to relearn the definitions (Resource: Odd and Even).
Single or plural
In English we say, ‘two hundred’, so we have more than 100, but we do not add an ‘s’ to the hundred. The same is true for thousands, tens of thousands and millions, although when I write them here, I do add an ‘s’! In many languages it is different, and the plural version carries forward, so translators from their first language will often say ‘two hundreds’.
Fractions
Once we enter the zone of the ‘f’ word of mathematics, fractions, we are in even deeper water, as there are special names for a half (not one twoth then?), a third (not one threeth), and a quarter, although in English we do allow the use of one fourth, as this is what the Americans call it. After that the rule is to add a ‘th’ at end of the number to make it a fraction, and I have already mentioned how few other languages have a ‘th’ sound. One fifth follows the spelling of fifteen, and then we can make fairly fast progress until we get to one twelfth. Thankfully there is no speaking and listening part for any maths exam in the UK, so it perfectly possible to pass a Level 1 or 2 Functional Skills exam and go onto a GCSE in Maths without ever having to correctly pronounce 'twelfth' (Resource: Fraction Matching- words and numbers)!
Decimals
Decimals when spoken in English can follow the fraction or be read out as written, so it will be necessary to teach the names of the place values before and after the decimal point to learners. For instance, 0.1 can be read out as nought point one, or as one tenth.
Ordinal numbers
Some of the words we have just used for fractions and decimals can be used to show the order in an event of some description, for instance, ‘fifth’, and ‘tenth’. For instance, I can say that I was tenth in the race, or third in a queue. These numbers are called ordinal, rather than all the quantity or counting numbers above, which are called cardinal numbers. It is perhaps unlikely that your learners will ever need to know the names, but it might help them to know that the words can appear in more than one context.
Just an fyi: there are nominal numbers as well: these are numbers used as labels, such as your house or phone number.
Zero
How many ways do you think there are to say 0? Zero, nil, nought, nothing and oh are all commonly used, and it depends on the situation which one will be most appropriate. I hear people give their mobile phone numbers starting zero seven, but if it is a landline we seem more likely to start ‘Oh one’. Even ‘no’ can be used sometimes, for instance if our bank balance is at zero, we would say we have no money in the bank. In tennis 'love' is used for no score.
Some of your learners may not be familiar with the numbers in their 1, 2, 3, 4 forms either, but that would be surprising, as it is a worldwide system which came from Arabic and Hindi. The concept of zero is not present in all cultures, however, although ‘nothing’ seems to be. Zero is written 0, to show that there is nothing inside the shape- did you know that? I didn’t know that…
All of which I hope will help ESOL learners make some sense of the English numbering system.
Updated April 2026