9 Los números 100+

Visit los números: pronunciación to hear how numbers are pronounced in Spain.

(http://www.languageguide.org/spanish/numbers/)

Los números 100 para arriba (the numbers 100 and up)

Things to remember with numbers:

1. “Cien” (100) changes to “ciento” beginning with 101 and up to 199.

• 110 ciento diez
• 130 ciento treinta
• 165 ciento sesenta y cinco

2. Gender with hundreds

All the hundreds ending in “-cientos” agree in gender with the noun that follows, meaning the ending vowel “o” changes to “a” before a word that is feminine:

3. How to express years in Spanish

In English, years are conventionally expressed using two “double digit” numbers. The year 1963 is expressed “nineteen sixty-three” and 1492 is read as “fourteen ninety-two”. In Spanish, years are expressed using “mil…” or “dos mil…”.

• 1963: mil novecientos sesenta y tres (one thousand nine hundred sixty-three)
• 1492: mil cuatrocientos noventa y dos
• 2015: dos mil quince

4. A thousand, one thousand, thousands:

“Mil” means both “a thousand” and “one thousand”, so it’s not necessary to use “un” before “mil”. The plural form of “mil” is “miles” and is used to express “thousands”. Similarly, the plural form “cientos” is used to express “hundreds”:

• Hay miles de estudiantes en la universidad.
• There are thousands of students at the university.

5. Periods instead of commas

Periods are used in Spanish to indicated thousands and millions where commas are the norm in English:

¿En qué año…? (In what year…?)

Años históricos: match up the years from numbers 1-6 below with the letters a-f that follow.

1. ¿…Cristóbol Colón llega a las Américas?

2. ¿…es Barak O’bama presidente de los Estodos Unidos?

3. ¿…es la Segunda Guerra Mundial (WW2)?

4. ¿…es la Guerra Civil de los Estados Unidos?

5. ¿…Alexander Graham Bell inventa el teléfono?

6. ¿…aterriza el primer hombre en la luna (moon)?