Having just learned the general classifier leh2 in our previous lesson, let's now learn numbers. As we are going to use numbers very often (and in fact you have seen some of them in passing), it is useful to have a good look at them right now.
When we talk of numbers in Penang Hokkien, we can categorize them under cardinal or ordinal numbers, as well as colloquial and literary readings. If you want to approach numbers that way, read the chapter on numbers in my grammar section and I explain all that. But over here, let's keep things simple by looking at the numbers you are most likely to encounter on a daily basis. (As far as possible, I try not to load you with all the grammatical terms unless it's absolutely necessary.)
As usual, always learn the spelling with the tone numbers right from the start.
Note how the tone numbers change when you fit them in a string. They behave like other words, in that they sandhi of all the morphemes except the final one. "Cit1" and "nor33" do not appear in two-digit numbers. To express the final digit as "one" or "two", we use "it3" and "jee33". "cit1" reappears as the front digit of hundred, thousand, etc.
Note how the numbers are joined together by hyphen. However, when the numbers are in the thousands, the numbers within the thousands are separated from the hundreds by a comma, the same way you would have written numbers in English and Malay.
When speaking, we often drop the cap1, so instead of saying gor33-cap3-snar1 (53), we simply say gor33-snar1. We also slur the thirties, so that thirty-one often becomes sam3-it3 rather than the full snar3-cap3-it3.
One million is pak1-ban3, however it has falling out of use (except perhaps to scold people). When I speak with property agents (Penang property prices are often in the million), the term they use for million is "million" itself. When they want to say that this house costs one million, I hear them use "cit3 million". So I would recommend following the flow than to stay within pure Hokkien.
To get used to numbers, it is useful to read through them a few times, then cover the list with a piece of paper, and see if you can still read them correctly.
One thing to learn for this lesson is sufficient. We will look at how we use the numbers we lesoon in this lesson, to incorporate them with the classifiers in our next lesson.
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