Arabic Numbers | Linguanaut (2024)

The table below shows examples of Arabic numbers. The first and the fifth columns have numbersused in some Arab countries; they’re not of Arabic origins but still used inmany places especially copies of the Holy Qur’an... Nowadays what we call theArabic numbers are the numbers shown on the columns 2 and 6. This numbering system is used bythe Arab world as well as the rest of the world, and gradually replaced Roman numerals as the predominant method of counting as it is much simpler for writing and calculating totals.

Forming numbers in Arabic is quite easy, from 13 to 19 youjust place a number before ten for example 13 = three ten,instead of thirteen in English, 17 is seven ten in Arabic. From 21 to 99 youjust need to reverse the numbers and add (wa- between the two numbers) 36 wouldbe six wa- thirty instead of thirty six (sitta wa-thalathun), (wameans and).

0 is sifr in Arabic, from which the word cipher came. For 11and 12 they’re irregular, so just remember how to write them by now (11 = ehda‘ashar, 12 = ithna ‘ashar).

So in general, numbers standing alone are easy to use, orsay. The hard part is that numbers 3 to 10 have a unique rule of agreement withnouns known as polarity: A numeral in masculine gender should agree with afeminine referrer and vice versa (thalathatu awlaad = three boys), boysare masculine plural, so the feminine form of number 3 should be used(which is thalathatu, and not thalathu which is the masculine form, theu at the end of numbers is used when a number is followed by another word tomake an easy jump to the next word) (thalathu banaat = three girls) banaat =girls, which is feminine plural, therefore a masculine form of number 3 shouldbe used (thalathu). That may sound complicated but once you get used to it, itwill not be as hard as it seems now, besides most Arab natives make mistakes orsimply don’t care about matching the gender and the number.

Arabic Ordinal Numbers:

Ordinal numbers inArabic are almost like the cardinal numbers, with some exceptions in thenumbers from 1 to 10, and a slight difference in numbers from 11 and up.

Note that ordinal numbers in Arabic are somehow likeadjectives, so they have to take the masculine, or feminine form. Please checkthe adjectives page for more information.

After 10 only the first number takes the feminine, forexample 13^th is thaleth achar for masculine, and thalethata acharfor feminine, achar stays the same, the first half “thaleth” which means 3^rdtakes “a” in the feminine, and so does the rest of the ordinal number, exceptten numbers like 20, 30, 40, 50, they look like cardinal numbers but they add “a” as a prefix for numbers starting with aconsonant, for example: 70 = sab’un, 70^th = asab’un (for both masculine and feminine), andthey add “al” for ten numbers startingwith a vowel, like: 40= arba’un, 40^th = alarba’un.