Getting used to the chinese number system(s)?

[Balthazar]

I'm currently in Lesson 31 of the NPCR series, and one of the things it focuses on is how to express numbers in Chinese. The basics has been introduced in earlier chapters, but there the actual numbers in use were fairly small, and cause little trouble for me.

 

This chapter is reminding me that I am having a hard time getting used to the Chinese way of expressing numbers. Or to clarify: I am having a hard time getting my brain used to thinking about numbers in terms of "hundred ten-thousands" instead of millions, and so on. (Incidentally, I am starting to understand why (it seems to me) many Chinese make mistakes when expressing numbers in English language too.)

 

I was wondering how learners usually deal with this. Have you reached a point where you are able to very fast understand a large number expressed in Chinese, without much conscious conversion going on in your head, and if so did this happen by itself over time, or did you do drills to get there?

 

One obvious way to do this would be to write down a bunch of numbers, going from Chinese characters to Arabic numerals, and from Arabic numerals to Chinese characters. Any other suggestions?

[Guest realmayo]

For me, slowly, over time, without drills, and not yet automatic for the 100,000,000 (亿) but only for the 10,000 (万). 

 

I think if you keep telling yourself "one million = yi bai wan" you'll get there in the end.

 

Numbers are difficult in any language, from what I understand most people even if they're fairly fluent will often translate into their native language and back again when doing slightly complex calculation.

 

And lots of languages treat numbers differently. I still find it odd and difficult when Americans say "sixteen hundred" instead of the "one thousand six hundred" that I'm more used to in the UK.

[OneEye]

Numbers are tough. I took a graduate level interpretation class last year and we quite a few oral number drills. They'd read out a number and we had to spit it back out in English. Mind you, we worked up to the trillions (and not just "四兆," but "四兆六千八百三十億五千五百二十三萬九千一百五十六" and such), but it was still tough for everyone there, and these were people in training to be conference interpreters (note-taking was allowed for big numbers, thankfully).

 

You'll get the hang of it though. I found it helps to think of it as grouping into four digits instead of three, so the above number would be 4,6830,5523,9156. Or 4,683,055,239,156 the way we write it.

[Lu]

I think drills might help. I've never done them though.

What helps a bit for me is to have a few numbers and their counterparts well-drilled: 十三亿 = 1.3 billion = population of China; 一千六百万 = 16 million = population of the Netherlands. Then if someone tells you the population of Taiwan is 23 million you can easily apply that to the Netherlands number and get 两千三百万. I suspect this gets even better if you rigourously drill. I really should try that.

If there is time (because it's on paper), I just count zeroes and many others do too. Write down the number from the source language, and then, starting from the end, put a dot at every three (for English/Dutch/other European languages) or four (for Chinese) digits. You get the number easily grouped in either thousands/millions or 万/亿.

[Hofmann]

If I have to translate a large number I write it down and move the commas. Or periods; whatever you use.

[Demonic_Duck]

It just takes time and practice. You might be able to shortcut it somewhat by simply thinking of “百万” as the translation for “million”, rather than as meaning “hundred ten-thousands”, but of course the limitations of this way of thinking become apparent as soon as you hit 10 million (“一千万”).

 

If it's a sticking point for you, I'd recommend what OneEye mentioned - drill random numbers until it becomes second nature. Open an MS Excel spreadsheet, type the formula

=RANDBETWEEN(1,100000000)

in an empty cell, and test yourself. Get new random numbers by refreshing with the F9 key, and alter the upper and lower bounds as desired.

[anonymoose]

Unless it's actually important for you to master this (for example, you'll take an exam containing this, or you need it for your job), I'd say just don't bother wasting too much time and effort over it. In practice, rarely does the occasion arise that you'll use such a large number. And on those rare occasions, if necessary, usually you'll be able to just take your time thinking about it.

There are more important things to grasp learning chinese. Just move on, I'd say.

[Balthazar]

Thanks for the suggestions. It's not really that important for me, and after reading these comments I probably won't put too much time into it, but it's interesting to hear how other learners have dealt with this regardless.

 

Special thanks to Demonic_Duck for the Excel-formula, very useful for this purpose!