Capítulo 3: La empresa y las finanzas

3.9: Gramática: large numbers

Large numbers in Spanish

Welcome to the last grammar topic for your fourth semester Spanish class!  It may seem funny to go back to big numbers this far into your Spanish language learning career however many Spanish language students struggle with big numbers.  Since you have chosen to take a class about Business Spanish, we assume you want to use Spanish in a context where you might talk about large numbers of products, large amounts of money, or even just years.  It is important to be able to do this correctly!  Let’s end this chapter with a review of numbers and how to form large numbers in Spanish.

Keys to remember:

Numbers that end in one have gender agreement.  You remove the final -o before masculine nouns and you add a final -a before feminine nouns.

Hay un edificio

Hay unas uvas en el refrigerador

Hay veintiún estudiantes en la clase

Son veintiuna personas

Between the tens place and ones place you have an “y”.  In the teens and twenties we change the spelling and incorporate “y” into a single word.  For thirties to nineties, the words are written separately.

16=dieciséis

24=veinticuatro

37=treinta y siete

88=ochenta y ocho

After that we don’t use “y” to connect the numbers.  Hundreds, thousands, or millions don’t have an “y”

400=cuatrocientos

550=quinientos cincuenta

555=quinientos cincuenta y cinco

1200=mil doscientos

2019=dos mil diecinueve

1.250.000=millón doscientos cincuenta mil

Please note, the use of commas and periods in numbers is reversed between Spanish and English.  Where we use commas in English, Spanish speakers will use periods.  And in English we separate numbers from decimals via periods and Spanish speakers use commas.

twelve dollars and 32 cents=$12,32

 

 

 

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