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Here we are! We’ve learned how to count from one to ten in Mandarin Chinese. This is a very useful thing to know and will make buying and selling from Chinese stores much easier if you ever find the salesperson’s English skills to be lacking. The only thing left to learn is ‘zero’, which will come tomorrow. After that, I’ll compose a test for you and make some cards you can cut out to help remember the characters, pronunciation and symbols.

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Easy to write and attractive to look at, nine is another simple Character. To make matters easier, it looks like a lower case ‘n’, the first letter of ‘nine’.

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If you’re familiar with the story of Scrooge, the nasty old man who wouldn’t enter into the spirit of Christmas, you’ll probably remember his favourite saying — “Bah, humbug!”. If you, like me, have ever wondered what “Bah, humbug!” means, you’ll be pleased to know that I have discovered an answer. Unknown to most people, Scrooge was actually half Chinese, and half British. His Chinese half considered the number 8 to be lucky, and his British half had a fondness for a particular soothing candy of the time, called a ‘Humbug’. Whenever Scrooge would hear something he didn’t like, he would ‘eight’ in Chinese to ward off the bad luck followed by ‘humbug’ to calm his anger. Hence — “Bah, humbug!”

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Seven is easy. Say ‘Chee’, and write an upside-down ‘F’. That’s it!

So, to recap, one to seven is:
“ee, er, s-un, s, oo, l-ee-oh, ch-ee”. Chant it while counting it on your fingers a few times and your brain will absorb it better.

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This is the hardest to pronounce character so far. Looking at the romanisation for this character we see ‘l-ee-oh(4)’. To pronounce this, simply say ‘l’, ‘ee’ and ‘oh’ in one sound. You should hear something like the name ‘Leo’. The hyphens between each consituent sound are simple to aid reading and don’t imply a pause at all. Like I mentioned earlier, don’t worry about the ‘(4)’ yet - that is simply the tone, which we’ll discuss later. For now just pronounce ‘Leo’ with force for an accurate ‘Six’.

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Although ‘Five’ looks complex, it actually consists of just 4 strokes. Try writing it with your finger in the air — you’ll find the strokes easy to remember.

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Unfortunately, the simple ‘add another line’ rule for counting in Mandarin only goes as far as three. Don’t fret though, these symbols are still easy to write. Please note that the second stroke in this character is makes up the top and right edges of the box.

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You’ll never guess what three horizontal lines means… Yes, yes. It’s ‘Three’, of course. I promised that this would get more challenging, and it will, very soon.

So to recap: In English we say “one, two, three”. In Mandarin Chinese, we say “ee, er, sun”. Practice it with me: “One, two, three. Ee, er, sun. One, two, three. Ee, er, sun.”
Not too tricky, hey?

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Using the logic of yesterday’s word, it’s hardly surprising that ‘two’ is written with two horizontal lines. Notice that the top line is written first. The general rule to follow when writing Chinese characters is top to bottom, left to right. The word is pronounced ‘er’ as in “To err is human”.

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We’re starting easy here!
A single horizontal line represents the word ‘one’, and is pronounced ‘ee(1)’. The (1) at the end of the Romanisation indicates that the word is pronounced with the first tone. Don’t worry about that yet. We’ll come to tones later.