Transcription
Hello, lovely students, and welcome back to English with Lucy. Today, I am going to teach you such an important skill. I'm going to teach you how to read numbers in English. So many of my students avoid reading big numbers because they're daunting; they're scary. I promise you, after today's lesson, you will feel so much more confident.
I've also created a free PDF study guide to go with this video. You can download this for free. Inside, you'll find all of the information about how to read numbers, with extra examples and further practice activities. I've also included lots of mathematical facts and figures, and there are even some number-based idioms in there.
If you'd like to download this PDF numbers study guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box and enter your name, your email address, and select your estimated level of English. Then you sign up for my mailing list, and the PDF study guide will arrive directly in your inbox. And after that, you've joined the PDF Club, you will automatically receive my free weekly PDFs alongside my news, course updates, and offers. It's a free service, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Okay, we're going to start at the very beginning, but it is going to get more complicated. How do we say this number? Okay, this is actually a good question because there are various ways we can say this number. We can use the word zero, or we can say naught. Now, when we say numbers one at a time, like when you need to give your phone number or bank account number, we normally say "O," as in the letter O. For example, "My bank account number is 01 765." Just kidding!
Okay, let's practice with a couple of my ex's phone numbers. I'm just kidding; they're fake. And remember, in English, we tend to read each number separately, but we chunk them into groups of two or three. So, for this one, 70486 95, if the same number appears twice, we usually say "double." For example, "double three 6 2 four." Now, notice how my intonation goes up as I say the first three numbers or digits, and then falls as I read the last three. This signals to the listener that the number has finished. 36 24.
Okay, let's move on to temperature. When we're talking about temperature, we use "zero," not "naught." For example, "The temperatures are unlikely to rise above zero all week."
And football results—very important. How would you say this final score? Well, in British English, we usually say "nil." So, "Liverpool beat Man United 1 nil," or "They beat Man United by one goal to nil." Americans are more likely to say "one zip" or "one nothing."
Okay, let's move on to some frequently confused numbers. How would you pronounce these pairs of numbers? Well, the higher numbers on the right are always stressed on the first syllable: 30, 40, 50, 60. The lower numbers on the left are usually stressed on "teen": 13, 14, 15, 16. This is the same for all the teen numbers, 13 to 19. Now, I say "we usually stress the last syllable," because the stress can move or shift if we place a stressed noun after the number. Listen, and see if you can hear the difference: "She's 17. She's got 17 exams." In the second sentence, the main stress moves to "exams," and "seven" and "teen" have more equal stress. Now, this stress shift can leave even proficient English speakers confused. When there's a doubt, read out each number to clarify. "Did you say 70? No, 17. 17."
Okay, it's time to move on to some bigger numbers. Take a look at these and consider how you would read them as words. Please do pause the video if you want some thinking time. Okay, the first is 100. 100. We can say "one hundred," but we often just say "a hundred." Now be careful; we don't usually add an "s" in the plural, so we just say "100, 200, 300," and so on. You will hear it pluralized in the phrase "hundreds and hundreds" or "hundreds and thousands," and we can also add "s" if we don't say a number or quantity before it. For example, "Hundreds of thousands visit the cathedral every year," or "I received hundreds of emails while I was on holiday."
Okay, the next number is a thousand. A thousand. And the same rules apply here. Question: Have you ever seen this written? So, "K" is often used as an abbreviation for 1000. An example: "The goal is to raise 3K for charity in under 20 days." Now, did you notice that I said "20," not "twenty"? It's very common to elide the T sound, especially when speaking fast.
Okay, next we have 10,000 and 100,000. Now remember, we don't say "10,000s" or "100 thousands." A million, a billion. Notice the Y sound in those two numbers: million, billion.
Now let's talk about when we need to add the word "and" when reading numbers. We always need to say "and" between 100,000 and a million, and numbers below 100—that's 1 to 99. Listen carefully, because this is going to be really helpful for you. This number: 11; this one: 12; this one, which honestly scares me as well: 1,984,999. We don't need to add "and" when the number ends in double zero. For example, this one: 1,100, not "1 and 100," 1,100; or this one: 17,300. Note that in American English and other dialects, it's also common to count in hundreds rather than thousands. So, in British English, we would say "2,500"; in American English, sometimes they would say "25 hundred." Whichever you choose to use, you'll be understood either way. I just think it's important you're aware.
Right, let's put all of this knowledge to the test and take a look at some big, big numbers. And don't worry, we'll build up gradually. Now, just to add a little more fun, all of these numbers have a special significance. Maybe you can figure out what it is, and if not, you'll have to download the PDF to find out. Here we go. How do we say this number? I'll divide it to help. It should be [Music] 1,331. Notice how I pause slightly after the word "thousand." We don't usually say "and," just "n" or even "an."
Okay, let's try another. How do we say this big number? This time we have 10,989. Okay, let's make these numbers even bigger. What about this one? How many thousands do we have? 111, so that's 111,000. Moving up to millions now. How, how do you say this number? Let's divide the number up. We have 3,628,800. Remember, we don't need to add "and" here, as the number ends in double zero.
Okay, this one is a really big one. Take a deep breath and have a think. We have 1 billion, 53 million, 47,000. Okay, great work. Don't worry, I have left plenty more examples in the PDF. This does take some practice for you to feel natural, and don't forget to check out the special significance of all of these numbers.
Okay, let's move on to ordinal numbers. So, cardinal numbers tell us about quantity, but ordinal numbers tell us about order, or the position or place of something. For example, "He finished second in the race." We can also use them to say the date: "My birthday's on the 10th of June." Let's take a look at how we form ordinal numbers. We'll begin with the cardinal numbers here. Most ordinal numbers end in the letters "th," pronounced with the "th" sound. Can you think of which? Pause the video now if you want to have some time to think.
Okay, here we are, and we just add "th" to 8. And don't forget to remove the "e" from nine before adding "th." Now, the ordinal numbers for five and 12 are similar, but we need to change the voiced "v" sound to the unvoiced "f" sound, and then add the "th" sound. This makes the words easier to pronounce. So, five becomes fifth, and 12 becomes 12th. Now, that's still very hard to pronounce, in my opinion. Lots of English speakers, and I am one of these speakers, cut it down to "fifth" and "twelfth." In spoken English, we remove the "f": fifth, twelfth. Go ahead and do that if it's easier for you in fast speech. "Fifth" and "twelfth" is what a lot of people say. Notice the vowel change with five to fifth: the diphthong "I" in five becomes the short vowel "I" in fifth. Five, fifth, or fifth.
Okay, we keep this pattern for the higher ordinal numbers too: 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and so on. The only irregular ones left in our table are one, two, and three, which become first, second, and third. And if you need to write them as numbers rather than words, just add the last two letters of the word after the number like this.
Okay, have you got that? Let's see if you can read these dates. Then these dates mark important days in history. Download the PDF to find out why. Okay, this one here. In British English, the first number or numbers refer to the day, then we have the month. So, in British English, that is the 6th of February. In America and some other countries, this order is switched, so the 6th of February would be written like this. I must say, I find it so confusing. I wish we could agree, because once I had a catastrophe when booking an American airline ticket. I put in my birth date as this: in America, this is the 6th of October 1994, but my birthday is the 10th of June 1994. Just be mindful of that.
Okay, reading the year is easy. We just divide the numbers down the middle: 198. The 6th of February 1918. What about this one? Well, the fourth month is April, so we have the 15th of April 1912. Notice how there's a slight pause before I say the year. What about this one here? We have the 20th. 20th. Although we often don't pronounce the second T sound, we might say "twentieth." The 20th of July 1969. Let's, let's try one more here. The 11th month is November, so we read this date as the 4th of November 2008. This is where it gets a bit confusing. For the years 2001 to 2009, we don't divide; we don't say "two thousand and one" or "two thousand and two." Instead, we just read the full number: 2001, 2002. Once you get to this year, you can do either "two thousand and ten" or just "2010."
Okay, let's take a look at fractions next. Here is a pie. Maybe it's a cake, or actually, I'm going to say it's a pizza. Here is a pizza. It's a whole pizza. If we divide it in two, we get two halves. "I'll have half a pizza, please." Be careful with the silent L in half. Half. We don't say "haalf." If we divide the pizza into three, then we get thirds. Thirds. Notice how we use the ordinal number here: "a third of a pizza." And we also need to add the word "of," or "of" in the weak form, before a noun. We need to do this with all fractions except half, where "of" is optional. As I said, this is usually pronounced in the weak form: "a third of a pizza." Now maybe you're really hungry, and you want two-thirds of the pizza. That would be written like this: two over three. Not so hungry? Let's just have a quarter of a pizza. A quarter. We can also use the ordinal number to describe this fraction: "I ate a quarter of a pizza. I ate a fourth of the pizza." But we usually use the word "quarter." Here are some more fractions. How would you say these? Give you five seconds. Pause if you need more, more time. But we have two-fifths. Yes, technically it should be "two fifths," but "two-fifths" is so much easier to say. We have five-sixths. Now that's so hard to say. I prefer to go for "five sixths." Sixths. We have four-fifths and nine-tenths.
Okay, what about these? Easy. We just have to add "and" after the first number: 9 and 3/4, 4 and 7/8. Okay, what about this fraction though? Do we really have to say "two hundred and forty-three seven hundred and twenty-eights"? No, thankfully we can just say "over": 243 over 728. I also have more good news. Decimals like this are even easier to read. We simply name each digit individually: 3.141, 1.618. You can use "naught" or "zero" for decimals less than one. For example, "naught seven" or 0.07. We can also drop the first "naught" or "zero" and just say ".07". I know in some languages you use commas for decimals. Don't get confused; we use commas for thousands here; for decimals, we use full stops or points.
Okay, I think it's time for a test to see how much of that information you've absorbed. Don't put too much pressure on yourself; this is tough. Children at schools in England spend many years learning all of this. It does take a little while, uh, but that's why I've included loads of exercises in the PDF study guide. I'm going to give you three seconds to think after each question, but press pause if you want a little longer. Question number one: How do we say this phone number? So we say each number individually and group in twos or threes. So we can say "916 834" or "91 68 34."
Okay, how do we say this fraction? We can say "three-quarters" or "three fourths." "Three-quarters" is more common. Remember to add "of" before a noun. For example, "I've read about three-quarters of the book."
Okay, number three: How do we say this huge number? I'll give you three seconds. Use that pause button if you need it. Okay, let's break it down: 364 million, 800, 74,212. Well done if you got that.
Question number four: How do we say this decimal number? Well, we say each number individually, so it's 1.75.
Okay, last question: How do we say this date? It should be the 12th of June 1550. Extra points if you manage to say "twelfth." I just went for "twelfth." Remember the stress pattern: 1550, 1550.
Okay, lovely students, if you've got to the end of this class with me here, well done. I really hope it's been useful for you. I've packed all of the information that I love teaching my students all about numbers into one lesson, and I've added even more in the study guide, so don't forget to download that. I really hope you feel much more confident reading numbers in English.
If you're still watching, in the comment section, I want to know if you know any really interesting numbers. Let me know what they are and why they are interesting to you in the comments below. I'll be looking out for them. If you've enjoyed this lesson, I'm sure you will love my beautiful British English programs. They are 12-week programs. We have the B1, the B2, and the C1. For more information, visit englishwithlucy.com. I will see you soon for another lesson. [Music]