Welcome to the third free unit in our Chinese4Free course. Understanding numbers, dates, and times is crucial to a person’s ability to speak a language, so this section will provide students with an introduction to these topics and their accompanying grammar structures in Chinese. As in the previous unit, PDFs containing character and grammar exercises for this lesson will be included for students to download, complete, and study at their leisure.
The third unit’s character exercise is available below for students to become acquainted with our new vocabulary before learning more grammar structures.
A helpful tactic for learning to write numbers, dates, and times is to first understand the Chinese size order. In English, dates are written in an irregular size order. For example, English speakers may say “Today is January 5th, 2021.” or write the same date as 1/5/2021 in the order of month, day, and year. You may notice that English dates are not written in ascending or descending order (a month is a larger unit of time than a day, but is placed before day and year), thus we say the English language uses an irregular size order. On the other hand, dates and times in Chinese are generally written in a decreasing size order. For instance, January 5th, 2021 could be written in Chinese as 二零二一年一月五号 which directly translates to “year 2021, January 5th” (notice that the units of time decrease from year to month to day). Moreover, this principle of decreasing size order applies to times in Chinese as well. In English we may write 5:20 PM, but in Chinese we could say 晚上五点二十分 which directly translates to “evening, five o’clock, 20 minutes” (notice that the time units once again decrease from morning or evening to hour to minute). Understanding this principle will make our discussion on the specifics of numbers, dates, and times in Chinese vastly easier.
Numbers
The Chinese system for numbers is remarkably intuitive compared to many Latin-based languages like English. Our course will only introduce numbers 0-999 for simplicity, but mastering these building blocks will make learning higher numbers very easy.
Numbers 1-3 in Chinese are represented by the characters 一 (yī)，二 (èr)，and 三 (sān), respectively. Notice that the number of horizontal lines or strokes in these characters corresponds to the number they represent.
This pattern is not true for numbers 4-9, but these numbers are represented by the characters 四(sì)，五 (wǔ)，六 (liù)，七 (qī)，八 (bā)，九 (jiǔ)，and 十 (shí), respectively. Zero can also be written in Chinese using one of two characters: 零 or 〇 (líng). Unlike English, zero is not used in combination with other characters to make double digit numbers (二十 means 20 rather than 二零). 零 and 〇 are typically only used when referring to a quantity of zero or when writing a year (2021 may be written as 二零二一年). Additionally, the number 2 can be written or spoken colloquially using the character 两 (liǎng). The characters 二 and 两 are effectively interchangeable.
To write double digit numbers, we use the Chinese character for ten, 十, to denote that a character before it is in the tens place. For example, the number 30 is simply written as 三十 because the base number three (三) is moved to the tens place by 十. To write a double digit number that does not end in zero, simply add another numeral character after 十 that will become the ones place. For instance, 43 may be written as 四十三 (this number may then be thought of as four 10’s plus three).
To write triple digit characters, we use the Chinese character for hundred, 百 (bǎi). Similar to 十, the character 百 is used to denote that a number before it is in the hundreds place. However, whereas we do not need to include the character 一 before 十 when writing numbers 10-19 (the number 1 is implied when no character is included before 十), we must always include a numeral character before 百 when writing a three digit number. For example, 124 can be denoted as 一百二十四. You may notice that 百 essentially denotes numbers in the hundreds place the same way 十 denotes numbers in the tens place. You also may realize that the principle of decreasing size order also applies to written numbers in Chinese, with hundreds and tens being written before the ones place. This pattern allows students to easily write numbers up to 1000 and beyond.
Dates
Our discussion of dates in Chinese will follow the decreasing size order starting with the largest time interval, years, and progressing through months, weeks, and days.
There are a few distinct differences between the way in which years are written in Chinese and English, but these differences once again make learning Chinese arguably more simplistic than latin-based languages. For instance, in English, we mostly refer to years as single, four digit numbers or two double digit numbers (2016 may be referred to as “two thousand sixteen” or “twenty-sixteen”). On the other hand, in Chinese, rather than referring to the year as a single number, each digit is written or pronounced one at a time (2016 would be written as 二〇一六年). Importantly, the character 年 (nián) must always be included following digits that refer to a year.
The method for denoting the month and day of a date in Chinese is much more similar to English than the method for writing a given year. Just as the character 年 must follow numbers that describe a year, the character 月 (yuè) must follow numbers that describe a month and the character 号 (hào) or 日 (rì) must follow numbers that denote the day. These characters can be thought of as the units for the numbers we write to describe a date. Therefore, to write the months January through December in Chinese, we would write 一月，二月，三月… 十一月，十二月. Notice that we return to proper numeral notation to write November and December (十一月 and 十二月) rather than writing each digit individually like we would for the year. Moreover, this return to proper numeral notation continues for writing the day of the month. Either 号 or 日 are acceptable characters to denote that the numbers written before them represent the day of the month. Once again, keep in mind that the order of Chinese dates is written from largest time unit to smallest, so the date July 26, 2021 would be written as 二〇二一年七月二十六号.
The final component used to write a date in Chinese is the day of the week. There are several acceptable formats for writing the day of the week in Chinese, but students will most frequently encounter the characters 星期 (xīngqí) for this purpose. To write the days Monday through Saturday in Chinese, students simply place characters for the numbers 1-6 after 星期 (星期一 denotes Monday as the first day of the week and 星期六 denotes Saturday as the sixth day of the week). Instead of using the character 七 to denote Sunday as the seventh day of the week, we use the character 日 or 天 (tiān) after 星期. When writing a full date in Chinese, the day of the week comes after the year, month, and day of the month. For example, Monday, July 26, 2021 would be written as 二〇二一年七月二十六号星期一.
Time
The smallest time units we will discuss in this lesson are AM/PM, hours, half hours, quarter hours, and minutes, so we will once again progress from longest to shortest.
To begin, times written in Chinese will usually include the characters 早上 (zǎoshang) or 晚上 (wǎnshàng) at their beginnings to denote if they are occurring in the morning (before noon) or evening (after noon), respectively. 早上 and 晚上 are effectively the Chinese counterparts for the AM/PM system in English.
Following the characters denoting morning or evening, the character 点 (diǎn) is used to indicate that the numbers preceding it are the hour or “o’clock” that the time takes place in (the phrase 点钟 (diǎn zhōng) can alternatively be written to indicate that the time is precisely some hour). For example, 7:00 AM may be translated as 早上七点 or 早上七点钟 because it is exactly the seventh hour of the morning. Regardless, the character 钟 is rarely included in time expressions for the sake of convenience.
After 点 is used to denote the hour of a time expression, the characters 半 (bàn), 刻 (kè), or 分 (fēn) may be included as time units to represent half of an hour (30 minutes), a quarter of an hour (15 minutes), or a specific number of minutes past the hour, respectively. For instance, we can use the character 半 to translate 7:30 AM as 早上七点半 (the character 一 is implied before 半 because two or more half hours would simply change the hour the time expression referred to, so no numeral character is necessary). Moreover, we can use the character 刻 to translate 7:15 AM as 早上七点一刻 because one 15-minute period has elapsed since the seventh hour of the morning (the character 一 must be written because 三刻 could alternatively be used to represent 45 minutes). Furthermore, we use the character 分 to indicate times that are not neatly divided into 15 or 30 minute intervals. We can therefore translate 7:46 AM as 早上七点四十六分.
Finally, if we combine all of the information we have covered in this unit regarding numbers, dates, and times, we can translate the phrase “Monday, July 26, 2021, 12:33 PM” into 二〇二一年七月二十六号星期一晚上十二点三十三分.
Time Words and Grammar
Beyond being able to write numbers, dates, and times in Chinese, students must learn the accompanying grammar structures and vocabulary to be able to effectively communicate about time. To begin, it is valuable to learn that the phrases 时候 (shíhòu) and 时间 (shíjiān) both refer to the concept of time itself, and can therefore be used in questions about time that we will discuss later.
In English, we often speak about time relatively, meaning that we communicate about times in the future and past compared to the present. The same is true in Chinese. To communicate about the present in English, we use words like “right now”, “today”, and “this year”. The present in Chinese is referred to with characters and phrases like 现在 ( meaning “right now”) and the time word 今 (jīn). For example, 今 is written before the character for day or year to indicate “today” or “this year” (今天 or 今年). Alternatively, we can use the time words 明 (míng) or 昨 (zuó) to refer to “tomorrow” or “yesterday” in the expressions 明天 and 昨天, respectively. While we also use the time word 明 to refer to “next year” in the phrase 明年, the character 去 (qù) is used as a time word for “last year” in the phrase 去年.
Rather than using the time words 明, 昨, or 去 when referring to the previous or next weeks and months, we use the phrases 上个 (shàng gè) and 下个 (xià gè), respectively. For instance, to indicate last month, we may write 上个月, but to indicate next week, we may write 下个星期. Because the character 上 represents “above” or “top” and 下 represents “below” or “under”, it is helpful to picture a typical wall calendar where dates reach the bottom of the page as weeks pass to remember that 上个 is associated with “before” and 下个 is associated with after.
With this rudimentary understanding of time words, we can begin to introduce questions about time in Chinese. The most important character for posing questions regarding time or numbers is 几 (jǐ), which means “how many” in the context of a question. It is helpful to remember that we should still structure all of our questions regarding time around the Chinese word order, STPVO (subject, time, place, verb, object). For example, to ask “What is the time?”, we can use the question word 几 as a placeholder for a possible time: “现在几点?” Using 几 allows for a much simpler question than using the question word 什么: “现在是什么时间?” A possible answer to our initial question can be written simply by replacing the question word 几 with the appropriate time: “现在八点半.” Additionally, 几 can be used to ask for a date in the format 几月几号. For example, the phrase 生日 (shēngrì) means birthday in Chinese, so we could ask a person when their birthday is by writing either “你的生是什么时候?” or, more specifically, “你的生日几月几号?”
Other than asking about times and dates, communicating about age is an important factor in learning the basics of Chinese. In English, we typically communicate our age by saying we are some number of “years old”; however, there is no equivalent translation for “years old” in Chinese. Instead, we use the character 岁 (suì) to indicate that numbers written before the character refer to age. For instance, if a student was 15 years old in the current year, he or she could write “我今年十五岁.” Moreover, we use essentially the same sentence format to ask a person how old they are in the current year, but we replace the numbers and 岁 with the question phrase 多大 (duōdà meaning “how old”): “你今年多大?”
Additional Grammar
Finally, we will conclude our third unit by addressing two more important vocabulary and grammar concepts: 谢谢 (xièxiè) and 可是 (kěshì).
The phrase 谢谢 is extremely common and should be familiar for any students entering a high school Chinese class. 谢谢 simply means “thank you” and can stand alone outside of any other sentences. 谢谢 is used under the exact same circumstances as when we may say “thank you” in English.
The phrase 可是 is also extremely common and is used exactly the same as the conjunction “but” in English. Using 可是 after a comma allows two separate independent clauses to be combined into one sentence. For instance, “今天是星期一，可是明天是星期二。” means “Today is Monday, but tomorrow is Tuesday.”
The Unit 3 Grammar Exercise will be included below for students to practice these new skills.