Xi'Er Dun 10 Report post Posted October 10, 2007 I have come across Hanzi 漢字/汉字 for greater numbers (anything beyond ten) like 卄 [nian4], 廿 [nian4] and 廾 [gong4,nian4] for twenty, 卅 [sa4] and 丗 [shi4] for thirty, 卌 [xi4] for forty and even 皕 [bi4] for two hundred. My question is "is there any more of these Hanzi for greater numbers, like a character for fifty, or five-hundred or anything along those lines?" I am familiar with 百 [bai3] for one-hundred, 千 [qian1] for one-thousand, 萬/万 [wan4] for ten-thousand, 億/亿 [yi4] for hundred-million, 兆 [zhao4] for Chinese Million, Japanese and Taiwanese Trillion. I have also found that the Hanzi Characters, 卍 [wan4] and 卐 once meant ten-thousand, and 亖 [si4] was once used for four. Can anyone add to my list of known Hanzi, whether they be for higher numbers or just variants for lower numbers? 謝謝您 Xi'Er Dun 希爾頓 from Australia 澳洲 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Han-tiger 12 Report post Posted October 10, 2007 Some characters in your post for greater numbers are absolutely new to me, a Chinese native speaker. “卍” is a distinctive symbol in Buddhism. In Chinese we call it “wan zi fu”. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
zhwj 22 Report post Posted October 10, 2007 Wikipedia is a great resource for this sort of information: Chinese numerals. Some of your other questions (like japanese characters) also have lots of answers there. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
deezy 11 Report post Posted October 10, 2007 Hmm, very interesting. But who actually uses these (oral or written)? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
melop 10 Report post Posted October 10, 2007 Hi, 廿 20, 卅 30 and 卌 40 are often used in oral Cantonese, but not mandarin. They seems to be an phonetically "abbreviated" version of 二十,三十 and 四十. It should be noted that these numbers are usually not used without followed by another digit. For example, it's ok to say "廿二" (jaa ji, 22) but not "廿" (20). Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites