Counting in Italian

Language overview

Italian (italiano) is a romance language from the Indo-European family. Official language in Italy, San Marino, and Vatican City, co-official in Switzerland (alongside with French, German and Romansh), it counts about 62 million speakers.

Italian 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).

• Numbers from zero to ten are specific words, namely zero [0], uno [1], due [2], tre [3], quattro [4], cinque [5], sei [6], sette [7], otto [8], nove [9], and dieci [10].
• From eleven to sixteen, numbers are formed from the root of the digit followed by ten: undici [11], dodici [12], tredici [13], quattordici [14], quindici [15], and sedici [16]. From seventeen to nineteen, the order is reversed, as the unit is put directly after the ten: diciassette [17], diciotto [18], and diciannove [19].
• The tens have specific names based on the matching digit root except for ten and twenty: dieci [10], venti [20], trenta [30], quaranta [40], cinquanta [50], sessanta [60], settanta [70], ottanta [80], and novanta [90].
• Compound numbers are formed by juxtaposing the ten and the unit, causing an apocope of the last vowel of the ten name before a digit starting with a vowel, i.e. one and eight (e.g.: ventuno [21], trentadue [32], quarantotto [48]). When a compound number ends with three, tre becomes tré and the stress is put on the last syllable (e.g.: cinquantatré [53]).
• The hundreds are formed by prefixing the word hundred by the multiplier digit, except for one hundred: cento [100], duecento [200], trecento [300], quattrocento [400]…
• Hundreds, tens and units are linked together with no space (e.g.: centonove [109], duecentotrenta [230], novecentonovantanove [999]).
• Thousands are formed by prefixing the word thousand by the multiplier digit, except for one thousand: mille [1,000] (plural mila), duemila [2,000], tremila [3,000], quattromila [4,000], cinquemila [5,000]…
• Numbers are grouped in words of three digits, with the specific rule that a space is added after the word for thousand if its multiplier is greater than one hundred and does not end with a double zero (e.g.: duemilatrecentoquarantacinque [2,345], seicentomiladue [600,002], settecentosessantacinquemila duecento [765,200]).
• The Italian language uses the long scale for big numbers where the naming pattern of the scale words alternates between the suffixes -ione and -iardo: milione (10⁶, million), miliardo (10⁹, billion), bilione (10¹², trillion), biliardo (10¹⁵, quadrillion), trilione (10¹⁸, quintillion), triliardo (10²¹, sextillion)…
• The digit one (uno) becomes un before a masculine noun, which is the case of all scale names. Besides, their plural construction is regular, the ending -e or -o becoming -i (e.g.: un milione [one million], due milioni [two million], un miliardo [one billion], due miliardi [two billion]).

Write a number in full in Italian

Let’s move now to the practice of the numbering rules in Italian. 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.

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