So, in our last post we taught you how to talk about your age in Korean (for a reminder, click here). But, did you know that Korean has two number systems? When talking about age, you use native Korean, but when talking about phone numbers, money and number of things, you use Sino-Korean. This system derives from the Chinese (Sino) form of numbers! The numbers are as follows:
- 일
- 이
- 삼
- 사
- 오
- 육
- 칠
- 팔
- 구
- 십
- 십일
- 십이
- 20. 이십
- 30. 삼십
- 100. 백
- 1000. 천
- 10,000. 만
Note that when counting numbers such as 11, 12, 33, 48, you simply add the second digit to the 10s. So 18 = 10+8 (십+팔=십팔) and 40 = 4 + 10 (사+십=사십)
If you can’t read the sentence, check out our Hangeul alphabet guide for vowels and consonants, or our “reading and writing Hangeul guide”.
Here’s a video further explaining the differences between the two number systems:
