Posted by Nash Biani

ABSOLUTE BEGINNER COURSE

SPOKEN ENGLISH

Lesson 10

(Page 1)

English Grammar:Cardinal Numbers

Page 1

The Importance Of Numbers When We Speak English

(or any language!)

Hi friends. In the last two lessons we looked at days of the week and months of the year. Both these sets of words are very useful to us when we speak English. Hardly a day passes without using something from these vocabulary lists. We refer to a particular day or month almost every day. "I'm going to Delhi on Thursday." "We are going to watch a movie on Saturday." "The report has to be ready by Friday." "Robert is getting married in January." "Our semester starts in July." "Diwali is in November this year." These or similar sentences we say or hear all the time. But there is another vocabulary list that we use every day -numbers.

"I'll be there by 5 o'clock."

"There are thirty-five students in my class."

"We have to write three papers this week."

"Afzal Bhai has two shops in the main market."

"Sudhir has three brothers."

"There are fifty pages to be photocopied."

So you see, we use numbers every day; in fact, one could say we use numbers every hour!

Now, most of us know the numbers in English but believe me when I tell you that we often get students at our academy who are are unable to count the numbers even from one to twenty. Then there are some who do rattle off some numbers but no one can understand what they are saying. And what if I tell you that we sometimes also get students who are from English medium schools but their pronunciation of the numbers while speaking English is not proper?

So, in this lesson let us learn something about numbers in spoken English.

ENGLISH AAM SPOKEN ENGLISH GRAMMAR BOOK

Write the following in your grammar book

In English grammar numbers are classified as cardinals and ordinals. Cardinals are numbers like 1,2,3 etc. or four, five six and so forth. Ordinals on the other hand are numbers like first, second, third etc. We will look at ordinals in a later lesson. In this lesson we will learn something about cardinal numbers and how to pronounce them when speaking English.

NUMBER	IN WORDS	HINDI
1	one	ek
2	two	doh
3	three	teen
4	four	char
5	five	paanch
6	six	chcheh
7	seven	saat
8	eight	aanth
9	nine	nau
10	ten	dus
11	eleven	gyarah
12	twelve	baarah
13	thirteen	terah
14	fourteen	chaudah
15	fifteen	pandrah
16	sixteen	solah
17	seventeen	satrah
18	eighteen	atthrah
19	nineteen	unnees
20	twenty	bees