Romanian numbers are the system of number names used in Romanian to express counts, quantities, ranks in ordered sets, fractions, multiplication, and other information related to numbers.
In Romanian grammar, the words expressing numbers are sometimes considered a separate part of speech, called (plural: ), along with nouns, verbs, etc. (Note that the English word "numeral" can mean both the symbols used for writing numbers and the names of those numbers in a given language; also, Romanian only partially overlaps in meaning with English number.) Nevertheless, these words play the same roles in the sentence as they do in English: adjective, pronoun, noun, and adverb. This article focuses on the mechanism of naming numbers in Romanian and the use of the number names in sentences.
The symbols for numbers in Romanian texts are the same as those used in English, with the exception of using the comma as the decimal separator and the period or the space (ideally a narrow space) for grouping digits by three in large numbers. For example, in Romanian 1,5 V means one and a half volts, and 1.000.000 or 1 000 000 means one million.
General characteristics
As in other numeral systems, the Romanian number names use a limited set of words and combining rules, which can be applied to generate the name of any number within sufficiently large limits.
The general characteristics of the number formation rules in Romanian are: The numeration base used is decimal. Word order is big-endian with the exception of numbers from 11 to 19. Large numbers use a combined form of the long and short scales. Connection words are used in certain situations. Some number names have two gender-specific forms.
Cardinal numbers
Cardinal numbers are the words we use for counting objects or expressing quantity.
Number name for 0
The number 0 is called . Like in English, it requires the plural form of nouns: "zero degrees", with being the plural form of ). Unlike English, the reading of number/numeral 0 is always and never replaced with words like oh, naught, nil, love, etc.
Numbers from 1 to 10
The number names from 1 to 10 derive from Latin. The table below gives the cardinal numbers in Romanian and the three other Eastern Romance languages (sometimes considered to be its dialects): Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian.
Number Romanian Aromanian Megleno-Romanian Istro-Romanian Latin 1 unu1 unu1 unu1 ur1 unus 2 doi1 doi1 doi1 doi1 duo 3 trei trei trei trei tres 4 patru patru patru påtru quattuor 5 cinci ținți2 ținți ținț quinque 6 șase șase șasi șåse sex 7 șapte3 șapte șapti șåpte septem 8 opt optu uopt opt octo 9 nouă noauă nou devet4 novem 10 zece zațe zeți deset4 decem
Notes
1. When counting, the number names for 1 and 2 have the forms given in the table; however, when used in a sentence, they change according to the gender of the noun they modify or replace. It is worth noting that the two adjectival forms of the cardinal number for 1 ( and ) are identical with the corresponding indefinite articles. "one boy, a boy", "one of the boys", "one girl, a girl", "one of the girls", "two boys", "two girls".
2. The name for number five in Aromanian, written or , might be responsible for nicknaming the Aromanians țințar.
3. Sometimes pronounced as (initially a regionalism), more common when communicating telephone numbers, in order to avoid a possible confusion between and .
4. In Istro-Romanian, depending on the speaker, some number names are replaced with their Croatian (Slavic) equivalents.
Numbers from 11 to 19
Unlike all other Romance languages, Romanian has a consistent way of naming the numbers from 11 to 19. These are obtained by joining three elements: the units, the word (derived from Latin "over", but now meaning "towards" in Romanian), and the word for "ten". For example, fifteen is , which literally means "five over ten". This is the only exception to the big-endian principle of number naming.
The table below gives the forms of all nine such number names. Each number in the series has one or more shortened variants, often used in informal speech, where the element ' is replaced by . Prescriptive grammarians consider the informal variants to be indicative of careless speech.
Number Formal Romanian Informal Romanian Aromanian 11 unsprezece unșpe unsprăd̦ațe 12 doisprezece1 doișpe doisprăd̦ațe 13 treisprezece treișpe treisprăd̦ațe 14 paisprezece2 paișpe pasprăd̦ațe 15 cincisprezece3 cinșpe (not cincișpe) tsisprăd̦ațe 16 șaisprezece2 șaișpe șasprăd̦ațe 17 șaptesprezece șapteșpe, șaptișpe șaptesprăd̦ațe 18 optsprezece4 optișpe, optâșpe/optîșpe, opșpe optusprăd̦ațe 19 nouăsprezece nouășpe naosprăd̦ațe
Notes
1. The number name for 12 given in the table is the masculine form; this is the only number in this range that also has a feminine form: (informal ). However, the masculine form is sometimes used even with feminine nouns, especially when the number follows the noun it determines, as in "12 o'clock" or ("12th grade", see below for ordinal numbers); such use is considered incorrect.
2. Number names for 14 and 16 do not exactly follow the forming rule, possibly under the influence of the number names for 12 and 13. The forms and do exist, but are perceived as hypercorrect and very rarely used (one might hear them in telephone conversations, for the sake of correct transmission).
3. Instead of sometimes is used.
4. The number name for 18 is notorious for being the word in Romanian with the longest consonant cluster (five consonants with no intervening vowels): , split into two syllables, . For this reason, the variants (with a missing ) and or (with an additional vowel to break the consonant cluster) are frequent. Mioara Avram, Gramatica pentru toți, second edition, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1997
Numbers from 20 to 99
The numbers in this range that are multiple of 10 (that is, 20, 30, ..., 90) are named by joining the number of tens with the word (the plural of ), as shown in the table below. Note that they are spelled as a single word.
Number Romanian Aromanian 20 douăzeci yinghiț3 30 treizeci treid̦îți 40 patruzeci patrud̦îți 50 cincizeci1 țind̦îți 60 șaizeci2 șaid̦îți 70 șaptezeci șaptid̦îți 80 optzeci1 opd̦îți 90 nouăzeci naud̦îți
Notes
1. is often pronounced (but not written) . Similarly, is often pronounced .
2. does not follow the formation rule exactly. The expected form does not exist.
3. This is a direct descendant of Latin , which did not survive in Romanian.
The other numbers between 20 and 99 are named by combining three words: the number of tens, the conjunction "and", and the units. For example, 42 is .
For those numbers whose unit figure is 1 or 2 the corresponding number name has two gender-dependent forms:
masculine: "31 men"; "32 men"; feminine: "31 women"; "32 women"; neuter: "31 degrees"; "32 degrees".
Short versions
The numbers from 20 to 99 also have an informal, simplified pronunciation: The part shortens to when the units name starts with an unvoiced consonant or a vowel. For 50 and 80 this contraction is incomplete, reducing only to . When the next word starts with a voiced consonant the same rule applies except that is pronounced voiced as . The same rule applies if the units number is 0 and if the next word is the preposition . Examples:
→ ("75"); → ("51"); → ("88"); → ("32"); → ("20 times").
In regional speech further simplification is possible ( becoming and becoming ). Also, the number , when it refers to the revolutions of 1848, is pronounced , which also gave words like (meaning "participant in the Romanian 1848 Revolution" or "supporter of its ideology").
Numbers from 100 to 999
Any given number from 100 to 999 can be named by first saying the hundreds and then, without any connecting word, the two-digit number of tens and units; for example, 365 is trei sute șaizeci și cinci.
Note that the word for "hundred" is sută, and that if the number of hundreds is 2 or larger, the plural sute is required. The noun sută itself is feminine and as such the numbers 100 and 200 are o sută and două sute.
In fast utterances, the numbers 500 and 800 are usually pronounced cinsute and opsute, instead of the standard forms cinci sute and opt sute, respectively. In writing, however, the informal variants are only used for stylistic effects.
Large numbers
The table below lists the numbers representing powers of 10 larger than 100, that have a corresponding single-word name. The word for 1000 is feminine, all the others are neuter; this is important in the number naming. In Romanian, neuter nouns behave like masculine in the singular and like feminine in the plural.
Number Singular Plural 100 o sută (două) sute 1.000 o mie (două) mii 1.000.000 un milion (două) milioane 1.000.000.000 un miliard, un bilion (două) miliarde, bilioane 1.000.000.000.000 un trilion (două) trilioane 1.000.000.000.000.000 un cvadrilion (occasionally triliard) (două) cvadrilioane (occasionally triliarde) 1.000.000.000.000.000.000 un cvintilion (două) cvintilioane 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 un sextilion (două) sextilioane ... ... ...
To say any cardinal number larger than 1000 the number is split in groups of three digits, from right to left (into units, thousands, millions, etc.), then the groups are read from left to right as in the example below.
12,345,678 (written in Romanian 12.345.678) = douăsprezece milioane trei sute patruzeci și cinci de mii șase sute șaptezeci și opt
When a digit is zero, the corresponding quantity is simply not pronounced:
101,010 (written in Romanian 101.010) = o sută una mii zece
In writing, the groups of three digits are separated by dots. The comma is used as decimal separator. This may be confusing for native English speakers, who use the two symbols the other way around.
Decimal fractions
Numbers represented as decimal fractions (for example 1.62) are expressed by reading in order the integer part, the decimal separator, and the fractional part. This is the same as in English, with the following exceptions:
The decimal separator is the comma, in Romanian virgulă. For example, 2.5 is written 2,5 and pronounced doi virgulă cinci. The fractional part is read as a multi-digit number, not by saying each digit independently. For example, 3.14 (written 3,14) is pronounced trei virgulă paisprezece (literally three comma fourteen). However, when the number of decimals is too large, they can be read one by one as a string of digits: trei virgulă unu patru unu cinci nouă (3.14159). Decimal fractions whose integer part is 0 (such as 0.6) are always written and pronounced in Romanian together with the initial zero: 0,6 is read zero virgulă șase, unlike English point six.
In some situations it is customary to say cu "with" instead of virgulă. For example, medical staff might be heard stating the body temperature in words like treizeci și șapte cu cinci, meaning 37.5 °C.
Percents
Percentages (%) and permillages (‰) are read using the words la sută and la mie, like in the examples: cinci la sută (5%), nouă la mie (9‰). For percentages an alternative reading uses the neuter noun procent, meaning 1%; the previous example becomes cinci procente.
Negative numbers
Negative numbers are named just like in English, by placing the word minus, pronounced , at the beginning: −10 m is minus zece metri.
Preposition de
Syntactically, when a cardinal number determines a noun and when the number has certain values, the preposition de (roughly equivalent to of) is inserted between the number name and the modified noun in a way similar to English hundreds of birds. Example: șaizeci de minute "sixty minutes".
The rules governing the use of preposition de are as follows:
For numbers from 0 to 19 de is not used. The same applies to numbers whose last two digits make a number in the range from 1 to 19. Examples: șapte case "seven houses", șaisprezece ani "16 years (old)", o sută zece metri "110 meters".