Counting in Catalan

Language overview

Catalan (català) is an Indo-European language belonging to the Ibero-Romance group. Official language of Andorra, and co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencian Community, it has about 11 million speakers.

Valencian

Valencian (valencià) is the traditional name given to the vernacular language of the Valencian community. Dialectal variant of Catalan according to some, separated language according to others, Valencian shares however its numbers names with Catalan.

Catalan numbering rules

Now that you’ve had a gist of the most useful numbers, let’s move to the writing rules for the tens, the compound numbers, and why not the hundreds, the thousands and beyond (if possible).

• Digits and numbers from zero to sixteen are specific words, namely zero [0], un [1], dos [2], tres [3], quatre [4], cinc [5], sis [6], set [7], vuit (or huit) [8], nou [9], deu [10], onze [11], dotze [12], tretze [13], catorze [14], quinze [15], and setze [16]. Seventeen to nineteen are regular numbers, i.e. named after the ten and the unit. Deu i set [10 and 7] is phonetically shortened with an apocope as disset (or dèsset), the same occuring with divuit (or díhuit) [18] and dinou (or dènou) [19].
• The tens have specific names based on the digits roots except for ten and twenty: deu [10], vint [20], trenta [30], quaranta [40], cinquanta [50], seixanta [60], setanta [70], vuitanta (or huitanta) [80] and noranta [90].
• The same applies for the hundreds where one word is created by adding a dash between the multiplier and the hundred word, except for one hundred (cent [100], plural cents): dos-cents [200], tres-cents [300], quatre-cents [400]…
• Tens and units are linked with the same dash figuring the conjonction and (eg. trenta-cinc [35]), except for the twenties were i (and) remains (eg. vint-i-cinc [25]).
• The Catalan language uses the long scale for big numbers where every new word greater than a million is one million times bigger than the previous term. Scale numbers are alternating: un milió (10⁶, one million), mil milions (10⁹, one US billion), un bilió (10¹², one US trillion), un biliard (10¹⁵, one US quadrillion), un trilió (10¹⁸, one US quintillion)…

Write a number in full in Catalan

Let’s move now to the practice of the numbering rules in Catalan. Will you guess how to write a number in full? Enter a number and try to write it down in your head, or maybe on a piece of paper, before displaying the result.

Books

Source

• Gramàtica Normativa Valenciana (pdf, in Valencian)

Links

• Generador numèric (generator of numbers pronunciation in Valencian)

Romance languages

Asturian, Catalan, Corsican, Eonavian, French, Friulian, Galician, Gallo, Italian, Jèrriais, Ladin, Latin, Lombard (Milanese), Occitan, Picard, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Proto-Indo-European, Romanian, Romansh, Sardinian, Spanish, and Venetian.

Other supported languages

As the other currently supported languages are too numerous to list extensively here, please select a language from the full list of supported languages.