Numbers in English. I’ve been speaking Spanish for almost 20 years and I still do math in English. But, it is really important to know how to say and write large numbers. One zero can make a complete difference.
HOW TO SAY LARGE NUMBERS IN ENGLISH
- 0,50 – fifty cents
- 561.00 – five hundred sixty-one. (British English: five hunder and sixty one)
- 2,000.00 – two thousand
- 972,000.00 – nine hundred seventy-two thousand (British English: nine hundred and seventy-two thousand)
- 9,000,000.00 – nine million
- 289,000,000.00 – two hundred eighty-nine million (British English: two hundred and eighty nine million
- 3,000,000,000.00 – three billion
COMMON MISTAKES
DECIMAL POINT
- Use commas to separate a set of three numbers.
- A decimal point is used to separate the dollars and the cents.
| 32,001 | thirty-two thousand and one |
| 32.001 | thirty-two point oh oh one |
DOLLARS AND CENTS
- Say dollars before saying the cents or else it can be confusing.
| $65,300.06 | sixty-five thousand, three hundred dollars and six cents |
| $65,306.00 | sixty-five thousand, three hundred and 6 dollars |
SINGULAR AND PLURAL
- we don’t say millions with a specific amount.
| 400,000.00€ | four hundred thousand euros |
| four hundred thousand |
- use an ‘s’ to talk about less specific amounts of money
- when it is a specific number, use a before the number and no ‘s’ on the amount.
| Millions of euros are spent every year on street cleaning. | a million euros are spent everyear on street cleaning. |
| Hundreds of billions of dollars are made by pharaceutical companies every month. | a hundred billion dollars are made by pharmaceutical companies every month. |
English Vocabulary
Now that you have learned about Large Numbers in English, take a look at our other Vocab Rehab posts:
Vocab Rehab: Micromanage
Vocab Rehab: Lateral Thinking
