Einundzwanzig: Why Germans Count Backwards (and Everything Else About Numbers)

German numbers up to twelve are painless. After that, German does something that trips up almost every learner at a checkout: it says the ones before the tens. Twenty-one is einundzwanzig — literally "one-and-twenty." Fifty-four is vierundfünfzig, "four-and-fifty."

Your brain wants to write the 5 first. It'll keep wanting to for about a month. This page gives you the whole system, plus the places numbers actually show up in daily life — prices, phone numbers, dates, and forms — where the conventions are different from English too.

Where the Punctuation Flips

German uses the comma and the full stop the opposite way round from English.

Write Them the German Way

This matters on every form you fill in by hand. Germans write 1 with a long upstroke at the top, so it looks a little like a 7 without the crossbar — and they write 7 with a line through the middle so the two can't be confused. If you write a plain English "1", some Germans will read it as 7; if you write a 7 without the crossbar, some will read it as 1. On an Amt form with your date of birth, that's worth avoiding.

Three Mistakes to Avoid

Writing the digits in spoken order. Hear vierundfünfzig, write 54 — not 45. Wait for the whole number.

Translating billion as Billion. A billion is eine Milliarde. Eine Billion is a thousand times more.

Reading the comma as a thousands separator. 1,500 € on a German bill is one euro fifty, not fifteen hundred.