Arabic numerals or Chinese characters?

[ralphmat123]

Hello,

I have a question about the use of the Chinese characters for numbers. In China, do they use Arabic numerals i.e 1,2,3... or do they use the Chinese characters i.e 一二三

I've seen videos of inside Chinese shops and they seem to use the Arabic numerals for prices, but I'm watching a TV show with Chinese subtitles and some numbers are written in Chinese characters (mostly small numbers 1-10) and then other numbers are written with Arabic numerals.

 

Can anyone who has experience of China shed any light on this?

 

Thanks 谢谢

[Shelley]

It seems to me that they is an equal use of Arabic and Chinese numerals. Using Arabic numerals is easier for some things such as maths, science and computing.

 

Also Arabic numerals are better for preventing mistakes/frauds. changing 一 to 十 is easy. There is a set of Chinese numbers that is more complex to help stop this but they are rarely used.

 

There are several good articles about Chinese numbers here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerals.

 

You can pretty much use which ever you prefer for most things.

 

P.S. I have not had experience of China but I hope this helps.

[edelweis]

Both are used and your observations match with my (limited) experience.

There's also a third set of "complicated Chinese numerals" (壹,贰,叁) used mainly on printed money and coins, and another set similar to A B C (甲乙丙) and they also occasionally use Western style enumeration such as Ⅰ Ⅱ III IV, and the letters A, B, C etc.

 

After all we (speakers of European languages) also have several systems such as 1 2 3, one two three, I II III, A B C, and even sometimes α, β, γ,  etc. which are all in use simultaneously although some are preferred in some contexts.

[hedwards]

I remember seeing both, but I think I was seeing far more arabic numerals than Chinese ones. It did vary somewhat, some of the schools I taught at would use Chinese numbers, but most were using Arabic numerals for the classroom numbers. Menus it was pretty much always Arabic numbers and the same for all the ticket stubs I got.

 

I'm not really sure why, but I suspect that it has to do with the fact that the Chinese system often times requires an additional place to state a number. All the digits up to 99 would require 3 characters rather than 2 numbers and at 100, you're potentially dealing with 5 characters 一百三十四 versus 134.

 

Then there's the complication where you often times need to use the fraud proof number rather than the more standard number and the calculators they use mostly work with Arabic numerals anyways.

[Demonic_Duck]

Equivalency:

 

English: "I'm 43 years old." Chinese: "我43岁了。"

 

English: "I have three sisters." Chinese: "我有三个妹妹。"

 

English: "Two hundred and twelve pounds sixty five pence ONLY". Chinese: "贰佰壹拾贰英镑陆拾伍便士".

 

By and large, Arabic numerals are used as they are in English. The regular Chinese numerals are used as you would use written-out numbers in English. The more complicated Chinese numerals are used for fraud prevention (e.g. for specifying amounts of money on written contracts), and also sometimes for aesthetic reasons - I wouldn't say they're "rarely used", just not as common as the other two sets.

 

You'll also sometimes get a mixture, again, as in English:

 

English: "300 million". Chinese: "3亿".

[hedwards]

@Demonic, I'll take your word for that, I just rarely ran into the fraud proof numbers other than in learning materials.

 

And you're right about mixing them, I definitely remember seeing things like 20万. Not quite sure why that slipped my mind.

[Demonic_Duck]

Interesting you say that. I've seen them plenty of times in the real world (mainly contracts, but also bus tickets and event posters, and also printed money as edelweis mentioned), but never in (printed) learning materials.

[gato]

The more complicated Chinese numerals are used for fraud prevention (e.g. for specifying amounts of money on written contracts)

Not for fraud prevention, but to prevent mis-interpretation and errors accumulated from photocopying. The purpose is served by writing out Arabic numerals in English in documents.

[hedwards]

@Demonic, I meant in things like flashcard decks, I didn't mean in textbooks, I've only encountered them in things like flashcard decks meant to convey all the characters you might encounter.

[abcdefg]

When my Chinese friends send me text messages that have to do with time and date, it seems they always write them out using the appropriate Chinese characters. 五月二十九日下午四点钟。

[Demonic_Duck]

Not for fraud prevention, but to prevent mis-interpretation and errors accumulated from photocopying.

 

http://baike.baidu.com/view/359995.htm#3_2

 

生活应用

不管是阿拉伯数字（1、2、3……），还是所谓汉字小写数码（一、二、三……），由于笔画简单，容易被涂改伪篡，所以一般文书和商业财务票据上的数字都要采用汉字数码大写……

 

Emphasis mine.

[hedwards]

@abcdefg, that's kind of strange, I pretty much always found that the date was written with Arabic numerals and Chinese year, month and day. That's certainly how the date as written on my phone as well.

 

@gato, perhaps, but I'm pretty sure the practice of those fraud-resistant characters predates modern copy hardware by many centuries.

[Shelley]

"Not for fraud prevention, but to prevent mis-interpretation and errors accumulated from photocopying"

 

I was under the impression that this financial set of numbers existed before photocopiers did.

 

I have an old watch with the financial/complex number set on it. Not sure the watch is very old but when I first got the watch some 25 years ago it prompted me to some research on this set of numbers and it seems that they have been around for awhile longer than photocopiers

 

I am sure that my research basically boiled down to the fact they they are used when money is involved to prevent fraud/confusion..My first Chinese teacher said that you would not think of using any other set of numbers when writing a cheque.

[Lu]

When my Chinese friends send me text messages that have to do with time and date, it seems they always write them out using the appropriate Chinese characters. 五月二十九日下午四点钟。

Could that be because you need to switch keyboards to write Arabic numbers? I have no idea if that's their reason, but can see myself doing this for that reason. Dates are normally written in Arabic numbers.

[abcdefg]

Could that be because you need to switch keyboards to write Arabic numbers?

 

Might well be. That's for sure why I use the Hanzi numbers in text messages instead of Arabic numbers --  (A "十五" instead of a "15".)