Do you notice that it’s always ten, or twenty, or thirty, followed by y and another number? This is the pattern we were talking about. Now that we’ve seen the hardest one, let’s look at the rest of the numbers higher than 16. We said this change happens in two more numbers: these are veintitrés (23) and veintiséis (26). Don’t worry too much about it for now we promise it’s not as hard as it sounds, but now is not the time. However, dieciséis is a longer word, so it does need one. Seis is a short word and only has one syllable, so it doesn’t require one. We won’t get too much into it right now, but basically, one of these rules is that words that end in vowel + s, like this one, that are stressed on the last syllable, always have an accent. The reason for this change is based on the rules of Spanish accents. E → É: And finally, the last change, is one that we’ll only see in a couple more numbers.That’s why, to make it look more aesthetic, it changes to i. The combination of the letters c + y is extremely uncommon in Spanish, and in fact, it only exists in a few foreign words such as cyan. In Spanish, the word for “and” is y, so if we wanted to put these words together, it would look like this: diec yséis. Y → I: The second change is another letter changing and it’s very similar to the previous one.In this case, what’s the letter that’s after c? That’s right, an i, which means it has the exact same sound as in diez. Moreover, for other reasons, we don’t use the letter z in front of those two vowels. In Spanish, the letter c in front of the vowels e and i has the exact same sound as z (which is like the “th” sound in “thanks”), while every other time it would have a k sound. Don’t let this confuse you, you’re better than that. Z → C: The first change is the z we had in the word die z that turns into a c in die ciséis, as well as in the words for the following numbers ( die cisiete, die ciocho…).Let’s analyze these changes step by step: You might notice it’s not written exactly the same way, but that happens for a reason. This is why first we’ll begin by explaining the hardest one, and then we promise the next numbers will be incredibly easy to understand.ĭieciséis (16) is nothing more than diez y seis (“ten and six”) put together. Just so you know, once we reach number 16, numbers start following a clear pattern, even though it might seem confusing at first. It’s time to start learning some more numbers. 1 – uno (or un if it’s in front of a noun, because it becomes an article, for example: un perro → “a dog” ).(They are, after all, some of the most important numbers in learning Spanish!) Normally one of the first things you learn in Spanish is how to count from 0 to 10, so you might already know this, but we’ll show it here just in case. In today’s article, we’re going to teach you everything you need to know about using numbers in Spanish, including how to count, write, and pronounce Spanish numbers from 1 to 100 and higher! We realize they’re not the most exciting topic when learning a language, but if we all use them when we speak our native language, what makes you think you won’t need them in Spanish? We don’t need to be experts, but we all need numbers and we all use them. We can count our money, or how many cartons of milk we have left, or how many steps there are from the entrance of your house to your room, or maybe how many days there are left until a special occasion. We all need to count things sometimes as well. We all look at the clock a few times a day, we go shopping and look at the prices of products… But we all still use numbers all the time, whether you like them or not. Most of us don’t need to do any complicated math on a regular basis, unless that happens to be part of your job description. We’ll probably agree that numbers are an incredibly important part of our lives. Surely you already know how to say a few numbers in Spanish, but have you mastered them? And no, we’re not asking you if you have a PhD in Mathematics.
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