Xi'Er Dun Posted October 10, 2007 at 10:54 AM Report Share Posted October 10, 2007 at 10:54 AM 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Han-tiger Posted October 10, 2007 at 11:57 AM Report Share Posted October 10, 2007 at 11:57 AM 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zhwj Posted October 10, 2007 at 02:15 PM Report Share Posted October 10, 2007 at 02:15 PM 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deezy Posted October 10, 2007 at 03:27 PM Report Share Posted October 10, 2007 at 03:27 PM Hmm, very interesting. But who actually uses these (oral or written)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melop Posted October 10, 2007 at 03:50 PM Report Share Posted October 10, 2007 at 03:50 PM 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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