---
title: Counting to 100 and lucky numbers — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics
description: «Counting to 100 and lucky numbers», a lesson of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Big numbers in Mandarin are built like Lego.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Chinese street](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/) / Counting to 100 and lucky numbers

# Counting to 100 and lucky numbers

<!-- .vabout -->
Lesson 7 of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school: 11 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/).

<!-- list vl: b t -->
- [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/0/) — Big numbers in Mandarin are built like Lego.
- [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/3/) — Order matters: a number before shí says how many tens, a number after it adds ones.
- [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/4/) — So èrshí is 20, but shí'èr is 12 — swap them in a shop and you pay the wrong price.
- [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/5/) — Numbers also make jokes and wishes: 520 (wǔ èr líng) sounds a bit like «I love you», 88 (bābā) is «bye-bye», and 99 sounds like «for ever and ever».
- [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/8/) — líng («ling?», rising) is zero, used in scores like líng bǐ sān (nil-three) and inside numbers like yìbǎi líng wǔ (105).
- [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/10/) — èrshí («AR-shr») is twenty, two-tens; sānshí («SAHN-shr») is thirty, and in fast speech the shí in tens is said lighter.
- [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/13/) — yìbǎi («ee-BYE») is one hundred; yī becomes yì before the dipping bǎi, and yìbǎi fēn is full marks.
- [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/14/) — duōshao? («DWAW-shaow») means how many or how much, for bigger or unknown amounts: duōshao qián? is how much money?
- [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/16/) — dì yī («DEE ee») means first; dì before a number makes it an order, so dì yī míng is first place.
- [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/17/) — wǔ èr líng (520) sounds a bit like wǒ ài nǐ (I love you), so kids giggle about it, and 20 May is a sweethearts' day online in China; 88 (bābā) means bye-bye.
- [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/18/) — Prices in Chinese shops often end in 8 or 9 for luck, not only for marketing.

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Counting 1 to 10, on one hand](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/6-counting-one-to-ten/)
- next →: [Colours](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/)
- ↑ back to [Chinese street](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/)