Burmese numerals
Burmese numerals are a set of numerals traditionally used in the Burmese language, although Arabic numerals are also used. Burmese numerals follow the Hindu–Arabic numeral system commonly used in the rest of the world.
Main numbers
Zero to ten
The Burmese numerals from 1 to 10 are all etymologically traced back to the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language, with shared cognates in related languages like Tibetan and Chinese.1 Burmese for zero comes from Sanskrit śūnya.
2 Can be abbreviated to in list contexts, such as telephone numbers.
Spoken Burmese has innate pronunciation rules that govern numbers when they are combined with another word, be it a numerical place or a measure word.
- For one, two, and seven, when combined, shift to an open vowel, namely the schwa
- For three, four, five, and nine which all have the long tone, when combined, the word immediately following it, given that it begins with a consonant, shifts to a voiced consonant. Other suffixes such as ထောင်, သောင်း, သိန်း, and သန်း all shift to,,, respectively.
- For six and eight, no pronunciation shift occurs.
Ten to a million
While the Burmese numbers from 'hundred' to 'ten thousand' are etymologically traced back to the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language, the numbers for 'hundred thousand' may be an areal word. The numbers beyond 'million' are derived from Pali.1 Shifts to voiced consonant following three, four, five, and nine.
2 Athinche sometimes could mean "too large to be counted".
Ten to nineteen are almost always expressed without including တစ်.
Another pronunciation rule shifts numerical place name from the low tone to the creaky tone.
- Number places from 10 up to 107 has increment of 101. Beyond those Number places, larger number places have increment of 107. 1014 up to 10140 has increment of 107.
- There are totally 27 major number places in Burmese numerals from 1×100 to 10140
- Numbers in the tens place: shift from ဆယ် to ဆယ့်, except in numbers divisible by ten In typical speech, the shift goes farther to.
- Numbers in the hundreds place: shift from ရာ to ရာ့, except for numbers divisible by 100.
- Numbers in the thousands place: shift from ထောင် to ထောင့်, except for numbers divisible by 1000.
The digits of a number are expressed in order of decreasing digits place. For example, 1,234,567 is expressed as follows to an open vowel.
Round number rule
When a number is used as an adjective, the standard word order is number + measure word:In spoken Burmese, for round numbers, the word order is flipped to measure word + number:
The exception to this rule is the number 10, which follows the standard word order.
Ordinal numbers
Ordinal numbers, from first to tenth, are Burmese pronunciations of their Pali equivalents. They are prefixed to the noun. Beyond that, cardinal numbers can be raised to the ordinal by suffixing the particle မြောက် to the number in the following order: number + measure word + မြောက်.Decimal and fractional numbers
Colloquially, decimal numbers are formed by saying ဒသမ where the decimal separator is located:Half is expressed primarily by တစ်ဝက်, although ထက်ဝက်, အခွဲ and အခြမ်း are also used. Quarter is expressed with အစိတ် or တစ်စိတ်. Other fractional numbers are verbally expressed as follows: denominator + ပုံ + numerator + ပုံ :
Alternate numbers
Other numbers, not of Tibeto-Burman origin, are also found in the Burmese language, usually from Pali or Sanskrit. They are exceedingly rare in modern usage.| Number | Pali derivatives | Sanskrit derivatives | Hindi derivatives |
| 1 | ဧက | ||
| 2 | ဒွိ | ||
| 3 | တိ | တြိ | |
| 4 | စတု | ဇယ | |
| 5 | ပဉ္စ | ||
| 9 | နဝ |