Arabic numbers are just like English numbers in that they use the digits 9. When you are learning the Arabic language, you have to learn the symbol and the word for each number, whereas in learning most other languages, you would only need to learn how to spell and say the word for a number. The numbers from 0 -9 in Arabic are:
0 sifr
1 wahid
2 ithman
3 thalatha
4 arbaa
5 khamsa
6 sitta
7 saba
8 thamaniya
9 tisa
Just as in English to make 10, you use the numbers 1 and 0, so that you have
When making any of the numbers from 10 19 in Arabic, you simply place the symbol for one in front of the other number.
The difference between Arabic and English numbers is not just in the symbols and in the spelling of the words. After 19, there is a difference in the way the numbers are made. In order to make any number from 21 to 99, you also reverse the numbers. In order to make the correct symbol of 35, you would not start with the symbol for 3. Instead you would write it as
Unless you are really familiar with the way words and numbers are written in the Arabic language, it is very likely you would read the numbers backwards because when writing in this language you write from right to left.
Even though you do place the symbol for one in front of another number in Arabic, you do not read it in the same way either. You would not say fourteen in Arabic. Rather you would read it as four ten because you also read from right to left.
In addition to reversing the numbers to form numbers from 21 99, when you read these numbers you inset the word wa between the numbers. Wa means and in Arabic to when reading 53, which actually looks like 35, you would say three and fifty.
When you use numbers in combination with nouns, then the number and the noun have to agree. The rule for this is that a number in masculine gender must agree with a noun in feminine gender and vice versa.
To say three boys in Arabic, you would use the feminine form of the number so that the words would be thalathatu awlaad. To say three girls, you would use the masculine form of the number, as in thalathu banat.
This means that in addition to learning the words for each of the numbers, you also need to learn the masculine and feminine forms of each one.
The ordinal numbers, such as first, second, third and so on are used like adjectives in the Arabic language. Therefore they also take the masculine and feminine forms. When you use the ordinal numbers to 10, both the number and the noun must be in the same gender.
However after the 10th place, you only change the first word to match the correct gender.
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