Persian Numbers III: 11-1000

For the numbers 1-10, see here.

Like English, Persian has slightly altered forms for the numbers 11-19 (though they all tack on the number ten, دَه, at the end, like the English “-teen” for ten) but then everything after that just takes the form “x and y” (in Persian, a number like twenty-four would read “twenty and four”), which is lucky for us because it means that after we get through 19 we just have to hit a few examples and we’ve got all the numbers covered to 1000 (really we could go past 1000, but numbers are infinite and our time here is not, so 1000 is where we’re stopping for now).

English name	Western Arabic numeral	Persian numeral	Persian name	Persian name transliterated
eleven	11	۱۱	یازده	yāzdah
twelve	12	۱۲	دوازده	davāzdah
thirteen	13	۱۳	سیزده	sīzdah
fourteen	14	۱۴	چهارده	chahārdah
fifteen	15	۱۵	پانزده	pānzdah
sixteen	16	۱۶	شانزده	shānzdah
seventeen	17	۱۷	هفده	hifdah
eighteen	18	۱۸	هجده	hijdah
nineteen	19	۱۹	نوزده	nūzdah

 

Now we can count by 10s or more:

• 20 (twenty): ۲۰ (بیست, bīst)
• 30 (thirty): ۳۰ (سی, sī)
  
• 40 (forty): ۴۰ (چِهِل, chihil)
  
• 50 (fifty): ۵۰ (پَنجاه, panjāh)
  
• 60 (sixty): ۶۰ (شَصت, shaṣt)
  
• 70 (seventy): ۷۰ (هَفتاد, haftād)
  
• 80 (eighty): ۸۰ (هَشتاد, hashtād)
  
• 90 (ninety): ۹۰ (نَوَد, navad)

And now by hundreds:

• 100 (one hundred): ۱۰۰ (صَد, ṣad)
  
• 200 (two hundred): ۲۰۰ (دِویست, divīst)
  
• 300 (three hundred): ۳۰۰ (سیصد, sīṣad)
  
• 400 (four hundred): ۴۰۰ (چَهارصد, chahārṣad)
  
• 500 (five hundred): ۵۰۰ (پانصد, pānṣad)
  
• 600 (six hundred): ۶۰۰ (شِشصد, shishṣad)
  
• 700 (seven hundred): ۷۰۰ (هَفتصد, haftṣad)
  
• 800 (eight hundred): ۸۰۰ (هَشتصد, hashtṣad)
  
• 900 (nine hundred): ۹۰۰ (نُهصد, nuhṣad)
  
• 1000 (one thousand): ۱۰۰۰ (هِزار, hizār)

Combining numbers is easy:

• 21 (twenty-one): ۲۱ (بیست و یک, bīst-ū-yik, “beest-oh-yek”)
• 84 (eighty-four): ۸۴ (هشتاد و چهار, hashtād-ū-chahār)
  
• 562 (five hundred sixty-two): ۵۶۲ (پانصد و شصت و دو, pānṣad-ū-shaṣt-ū-du)
  
• 1357 (one thousand three hundred fifty-seven): ۱۳۵۷ (هزار و سیصد و پنجاه و هفت, hizār-ū-sīṣad-ū-panjāh-ū-haft)

To somebody accustomed to a left-to-right writing system, it seems like Persian strangely writes its large numerals left-to-right (above, “562” is ۵۶۲), even though the rest of the language is written from right-to-left, and, frankly, this is strange in the case of Persian. However, this is how you write numbers in Arabic script because Arabic reads numbers from smallest to largest, not largest to smallest like us we do in English (or like they do in Persian). This is one case where the adopted script doesn’t completely map to the particulars of the language.

• numbers
• Persian
• persian vocabulary