I numeri :
a) the irregular : like in
french, the
numbers from
one to
sixteen are irregular, those above
ten are spelt backwards : the
units first.
1 uno
2 due
3 tre
4 quattro
5 cinque
6 sei
7 sette
8 otto
9 nove
10 dieci
11 undici
12 dodici
13 tredici
14 quattordici
15 quindici
16 sedici
From there, the numbers are called in the "right order" :
Hundreds then tens then units. The rule is simple : every ten has two forms, one for
vowel started
suffixes, one for
consonant started suffixes. This is almost like the
Latin numbers(1), except
x8 and
x9 aren not called
2 before (x+1)*10 and
1 before (x+1)*10 respectively. One can remark that French and
Italian evolved the same way from
Latin, throwing away many letters in the process. The long
triginta became
trenta/
trente, the even longer
quadraginta became
quaranta/
quarante.
17 diciasette
18 diciotto
19 dicianove
b)the tens
20 venti (vent- when preceding a vowel)
30 trenta (trent-)
40 quaranta (quarant-)
50 cinquanta (cinquant-)
60 sessanta (sessant-)
70 settanta (settant-)
80 ottanta (ottant-)
90 novanta (novant-)
49 will thus be :
quarantanove, 78
settantotto
From 70, there is an important
behavioral difference between
French French and
Italian : while the French count by twenties from 60 (76 becoming
sixty-sixteen, 94
eighty-fourteen), there is no such thing in Italian, as this is a
Gaul inheritance and
Italics weren't
Gauls. Another French artifact is 80, called
quatre-vingt (four times twenty). The
Swiss flavor of French in contrast is
grammatically equivalent to Italian (
70 : septante,80 : octante,90 : nonante).
c)the hundreds and beyond
100 cento
200 duecento
300 trecento
400 quattrocento...
1,000 mille
2,000 duemila
3,000 tremila...
1,000,000 un milione
2,000,000 due milioni
3,000,000 tre milioni
The Italians being
Europeans, they dont refer to 1000 millions (10e9) as
billions, but as
milliards.
un billione is instead a million millions (10e12)
1,000,000,000 un miliardo
2,000,000,000 due miliardi
3,000,000,000 tre miliardi...
So the following number will be called :
123,456,789,012.
Centoventitre milliardi quattrocentocinquantasei millioni settecentottantanovemiladodici.
(1) With the Latin numbers being decimal, almost as decimal as the modern system, one can wonder why they invented such a crazy 'MDCLXI'-based system and didn't come up with the Arabian/Indian numbers earlier.