BBC Bitesize – KS2 Primary Mandarin Curriculum – Mandarin Numbers

The Mandarin numbers song

Numbers are a great place to start when learning Mandarin.

A great way to learn the numbers one to ten in Mandarin is to sing along with this song:

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Sing along and practise your Mandarin counting skills.

It is important to remember that singing in Mandarin changes the tones.

When you want to say you have two of something in Mandarin, you don’t use èr (two).

Instead, you use the Mandarin word liǎng, for example:

Liǎng zhǐ xiǎo gǒu – two dogs

This rule only applies to the number ‘two’.

All numbers higher than ten in Mandarin are built on the basics of one through ten, for example:

To say 11, you would combine ten and one, so shí yī (ten plus one)
To say 20, you would combine two and ten, so èr shí (two tens)
To say 31, you would combine three, ten and one, so sān shí yī (three tens plus one)