一 到 九十九【yī dào jiǔshíjiǔ】

Chinese numbers to ninety-nine are built out of ten characters and one rule: multiply on the left of 十, add on the right.

十二 is ten plus two, so twelve. 二十 is two tens, so twenty. 二十五 is two tens plus five.

There is nothing to memorise above ten. Once the ten digits are known, every number to ninety-nine follows from where the digit sits.

The teens drop the one

Eleven is 十一, not 一十一. The leading 一 appears again from a hundred upwards: 一百一十.

二 here, not 两

Reading a number out uses 二: 二十, 十二, 二十二. 两 only appears in front of a measure word.

零 in the middle

A gap inside a number is filled with 零, once, however many zeros there are: 一百零五 is 105.

The financial forms

On a cheque or a price tag the numbers are written 壹 贰 叁 肆 伍 陆 柒 捌 玖 拾, which are harder to alter. They are read the same way.