Numbers in Italian

How numbers work in Italian

Italian has separate words for 0 to 16: zero, uno, due … undici, dodici, tredici, quattordici, quindici, sedici. From 17 to 19 dieci comes first: diciassette, diciotto, diciannove.

The tens are venti, trenta, quaranta, cinquanta, sessanta, settanta, ottanta, novanta. The unit is attached directly: ventidue, trentacinque. Before uno and otto the ten drops its final vowel: ventuno, ventotto, trentuno. Numbers ending in tre take an accent: ventitré, trentatré.

Italian writes numbers as one word: centoventitré (123). 100 is cento, and hundreds attach cento: duecento, trecento, cinquecento. 1,000 is mille, but from 2,000 it becomes -mila: duemila, diecimila, centomila. Un milione is written separately.

Uno behaves like the indefinite article: un libro, una casa, uno studente. Ordinals up to ten are irregular (primo, secondo, terzo …); from eleven you add -esimo: undicesimo, ventesimo.

Times start with sono le; one o'clock is è l'una, and noon and midnight are è mezzogiorno and è mezzanotte. Minutes are added with e (e un quarto, e mezza, e cinque). From about forty minutes on you subtract from the next hour: le nove meno venti is 8:40.

E mezza (or e mezzo) means half past, so le tre e mezza is 3:30. In conversation people mostly use the 12-hour clock with di mattina, del pomeriggio or di sera; official times and timetables use the 24-hour clock.