Grasping Numbers as a Non-Native Speaker

When was the last time you used numbers in one of your conversations? If you think about it, there’s hardly a day that passes without using any numbers. When learning a new language – Russian in your case – learning how to count is just as important as learning how to say “hello” . So if you’re planning a trip to a Russian-speaking country , learning the Russian numbers is a must.

Whether you need to find out what’s the price for a matryoshka, ask a stranger when is the next bus arriving or give someone your phone number, knowing the Russian numbers is definitely essential. On top of that, they are not even that hard to learn. Once you learn how to count to ten, counting to 100 is a piece of cake.

Russian numbers 1-10

In order to understand the logic behind counting in Russian faster, it’s best to break down the information into multiple sections. As you may expect, the Russian numbers from 1 to 10 are the most important. Not only these are the ones you’ll probably use the most, but they also lay the foundations for the bigger numbers in Russian.

Here are the numbers from 1 to 10 in Russian with their respective pronunciations so you can begin practicing right now:

Russian numbers 1-10

Good to know: when the numbers один (“one”) and два (“two”) are put before a noun, they can change their form according to the gender of the noun thus:

• masculine: один (odin) ; два (dva)
• feminine: одна (odna) ; две (dve)
• neuter: одно (odno) ; два (dva)

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Learn how to count to 20 in Russian

Did you manage to learn the Russian pronunciation for the first ten numbers? If you are having issues with the accent, you can get Mondly now and hear them pronounced by professional Russian speakers.

If you did manage, good job! You must be a natural.

Let’s move on to the next section: learning how to count to 20 in Russian. As you’ll see, the numbers from 11 to 19 are simply formed by adding “надцать” to the numbers 1-9.

Russian numbers 11-20

Good to know: If you want to bring a flower bouquet when you are invited to someone’s house in Russia, choose an odd number of flowers – so три, пять, семь or девять flowers. One Russian superstition says that bouquets with an even number of flowers are adequate only for funerals.

Russian numbers: 21 and onwards

From here on, Russian numbers are formed similarly to the English numbers (minus the word “and”). If 20 is двадцать_(dvadtsat)_ , then 21 is двадцатьодин ( dvadtsat odin) and 22 is двадцатьдва (dvadtsat dva) . Basically, you justadd the numbers from 1 to 9 to the tens.

Russian tens

Here are some examples:

• 33 is тридцатьтри (tridtsat tri)
• 46 is сорокшесть (sorok shest)
• 52 is пятьдесятдва (pyatdesyat dva)
• 64 is шестьдесятчетыре (shestdesyat chetyre)
• 79 is семьдесятдевять (semdesyat devyat)
• 88 is восемьдесятвосемь (vosemdesyat vosem)
• 96 is девяностошесть (devyanosto shest)

And guess what! It works the same with the hundreds.

Russian hundreds

For example, if you want to say 146, you say сто сорок шесть_(sto sorok shest)_ .

Not as hard as you’d expect, is it?

Russian ordinal numbers

Now that you’ve learned the Russian cardinal numbers, let’s end this short lesson with some ordinal numbers. You never know when they may come in handy.

• the first – Первый (pervyy)

• the second – Второй (vtoroy)

• the third – Третий (tretiy)

• the fourth – Четвертый (chetvyortyy)

• the fifth – Пятый (pyatyy)

• the sixth – Шестой (shestoy)

• the seventh – Седьмой (sed’moy)

• the eighth – Восьмой (vos’moy)

• the ninth – Девятый (devyatyy)

• the tenth – Десятый (desyatyy)

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