The Chinese - Japanese verbal system
The number that we express with the numeral 35,437,110 is written (in words):
thirty-five million, four hundred thirty-seven thousand, one hundred ten. Notice that the commas
in the numeral give us important clues about how it should be written. The first group (from the
right) represents ones, the next thousands and the last millions.
The Chinese and Japanese use almost the same numeral to represent this number:
3543,7110. The only difference is that they use commas to mark off digits in groups of four.
The first group (from the right) represents ones, and the next group represents ten-thousands.
Thus if we were to translate the Chinese words describing this number into English, the result
would be: three thousand five hundred forty-three ten thousand, seven thousand one hundred
ten.
The chart on the last page gives the symbols for each word needed in writing the names
of numbers. Remember that in the Chinese written language, characters (symbols) are used for
entire words.
Example 1: The number we call fifty-three would be translated as
"five ten three" using the characters for five, for ten
and for three:
is equivalent to fifty-three.
Example 2: The Chinese written form of our numeral 5,625
would be:
as five thousand six hundred two ten five. Thus
= 5(1000) + 6(100) + 2(10) + 5 = 5625.
Example 3: The Chinese written form of the number 35,437,110 is:
Notice that just as in English, the Chinese say one hundred but not one
ten.
