Vietnamese numbers

Start here, and learn each number with its tone. Several of them double as everyday words, so you'll hear them constantly. Notice that ten, mười, has a falling tone: that changes when it becomes part of a bigger number.

To count things, put the number before the noun, usually with a small counting word in between: hai chai bia (two bottles of beer), ba con mèo (three cats). To ask 'how many', use mấy for small numbers you expect to be under ten, and bao nhiêu for anything bigger, including prices.

Two-digit numbers are built like 'ten-one', 'two-ten-one'. Five small rules cover everything:

• 11 to 19: mười plus the digit: mười một (11), mười hai (12).
• The tens: digit plus mươi, with no tone mark: hai mươi (20), ba mươi (30).
• One becomes mốt after twenty: hai mươi mốt (21), ba mươi mốt (31).
• Five becomes lăm after mười or mươi: mười lăm (15), hai mươi lăm (25). From 25 up, Northerners also say nhăm.
• Four often becomes tư after twenty: hai mươi tư (24). Bốn is fine too.

In speech people often drop mươi: hai mốt (21), hai lăm (25), ba lăm (35). You'll also hear old short forms, hăm for twenty and băm for thirty, as in Hanoi's famous băm sáu phố phường, its 36 old streets.

The big units are trăm (hundred), nghìn (thousand, ngàn in the South), triệu (million) and tỷ (billion, also spelled tỉ). They group in threes, exactly like English: 25,000 is hai mươi lăm nghìn, 350,000 is ba trăm năm mươi nghìn, 1,200,000 is một triệu hai trăm nghìn.

Two zeros need a word. A zero in the tens place is linh in the North and lẻ in the South: 105 is một trăm linh năm or một trăm lẻ năm. A zero in the hundreds place is không trăm: 2,050 is hai nghìn không trăm năm mươi.

In writing, Vietnam uses dots for thousands and commas for decimals, the opposite of English: 50.000đ is fifty thousand dong, and 2,5 kg is two and a half kilos.

Coins have all but disappeared in Vietnam, and the notes you'll handle most run from 1,000 to 500,000 dong. With that many zeros, nobody says prices in full. Here is what you'll actually hear and see:

• The thousand is dropped when it's obvious. At a stall, ba mươi or, in the South, ba chục means 30,000.
• k means nghìn in writing: 25k on a menu is 25,000 dong. tr means triệu: 15tr is 15 million. More shorthand like this in our texting abbreviations guide.
• Rưỡi means 'and a half' of the unit before it: trăm rưỡi is 150,000, triệu rưỡi is 1.5 million.
• The tens after a hundred or a million are shortened too: trăm hai is 120,000, hai trăm mốt is 210,000, hai triệu tư is 2.4 million.

You don't need to use these, but you'll hear them among friends, in shops and online, and they're confusing if nobody tells you:

• lít (litre) = 100,000, mostly Northern. Năm lít is 500,000.
• xị = 100,000, Southern. A xị is also a small bottle of rice wine.
• củ (a root, like a potato) = 1 million. Northern in origin, understood everywhere.
• chai (bottle) = 1 million, Southern.
• tỏi (garlic) = 1 billion, mostly said as a joke.

Context keeps it clear: một lít at a petrol station is still a litre of fuel.

At the wet market, fruit, meat, fish and vegetables are priced by weight. A kilo is cân in the North and ký in the South. In the North you'll also hear lạng, 100 grams, which is handy for meat and herbs. Ask the price per kilo before the seller starts weighing.

When you pay, the change is tiền thừa in the North and tiền thối in the South. Small sellers often struggle to break a 500,000 note early in the morning, so carry small notes, or pay by scanning the seller's QR code, which many stalls now display. For haggling phrases, see how to bargain in Vietnamese.

Phone numbers. Mobile numbers have ten digits and start with 0. People read them digit by digit, in groups: 0903 123 456 is không chín không ba, một hai ba, bốn năm sáu. Say it slowly, and expect the other person to repeat it back.

Years. 2026 is hai nghìn không trăm hai mươi sáu, often shortened to hai nghìn hai mươi sáu. Birth years usually use the last two digits: sinh năm chín lăm is born in '95.

Floors. In Hanoi, tầng một is the ground floor. In Saigon, the ground floor is tầng trệt and the floors above are lầu một, lầu hai, so lầu một is one floor up. Check before you climb the stairs.

Days and order. Monday to Saturday are numbered: thứ hai (Monday) to thứ bảy (Saturday), with thứ tư for Wednesday, never thứ bốn. Sunday is chủ nhật. The same thứ makes ordinals: thứ nhất (first), thứ hai (second).