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Korean Numbers: A Beginner’s Guide

by Linda McKenna // January 27 // 0 Comments

Did you know that there are two different number systems used in Korea? One is called native numbers, and the other is called Sino numbers.

We'll learn about both number systems here in this article. 

Guide to Korean Numbers

Before we dive into the topic, here's a little fact for you. 

Interesting fact

Sino-Korean refers to words and numbers that originated in or influenced by China. About 60 percent of Korean vocabulary has Chinese roots and can be written in Chinese characters called ํ•œ์ž (han-ja).

Korean native numbers 1 to 99

Native numbers are the original Korean number system. These numbers are used for counting, for age, and for the hour portion of time. 

Have you ever taken a Korean martial arts class? If you have, you might recognize the native numbers 1 to 10, or at least 1 to 8. In many martial arts schools, the instructors often use Korean numbers when counting the movements.

Letโ€™s look at the numbers 1 to 100:

1ํ•˜๋‚˜ (hana)
2๋‘˜ (dul)
3์…‹ (set)
4๋„ท (net)
5๋‹ค์„ฏ (da-seot)
6์—ฌ์„ฏ (yeo-seot)
7์ผ๊ณฑ (il-gop)
8์—ฌ๋Ÿ (yeo-deol)
9์•„ํ™‰ (ahop)
10์—ด (yeol)
10์—ด (yeol)
20์Šค๋ฌผ (seu-meul)
30์„œ๋ฅธ (seo-reun)
40๋งˆํ” (ma-heun)
50์‰ฐ (shin)
60์˜ˆ์ˆœ (ye-sun)
70์ผํ” (il-heun)
80์—ฌ๋“  (yeo-deun)
90์•„ํ” (a-heun)

Note that zero does not exist in native Korean numbers, since you cannot count something that does not exist. In addition, the native numbers only go up to 99. Beyond that, Sino numbers are used.

Just add the numbers 1 to 9 to the number 10 to get the numbers 11 to 19:

11 = ์—ด(10) + ํ•˜๋‚˜(1) = ์—ดํ•˜๋‚˜

12 = ์—ด(10) + ๋‘˜(2) = ์—ด๋‘˜

13 = ์—ด(10 + ์…‹(3) = ์—ด์…‹

And so onโ€ฆ 

21 to 99 work in the same way:

21 = ์Šค๋ฌผ(20) + ํ•˜๋‚˜(1) = ์Šค๋ฌผ ํ•˜๋‚˜

35 = ์„œ๋ฅธ(30) + ๋‹ค์„ฏ(5) = ์„œ๋ฅธ ๋‹ค์„ฏ

99 = ์•„ํ”(90) + ์•„ํ™‰(9) = ์•„ํ” ์•„ํ™‰

Sino numbers 1 to 100

Sino numbers are, in some ways, easier to learn. As shown below, 20 to 90 use the same words for 2 to 9 combined with the word for 10.

0๊ณต / ์˜ (gong/yung)
1์ผ (il)
2์ด (ee)
3์‚ผ (sam)
4์‚ฌ (sa)
5์˜ค (oh)
6์œก (yuk)
7์น  (chil)
8ํŒ” (pal)
9๊ตฌ (gu)
10์‹ญ (ship)

Similar to the native numbers, once you memorize the numbers 1 to 10, the rest of the numbers are very logical:

11 = ์‹ญ(10) + ์ผ(1) = ์‹ญ์ผ

23 = ์ด์‹ญ(20) + ์‚ผ(3) = ์ด์‹ญ์‚ผ

45 = ์‚ฌ์‹ญ(40) + ์˜ค(5) = ์‚ฌ์‹ญ์˜ค

And so onโ€ฆ

Following this pattern, you can read any number up to 100 in Korean!

Sino numbers beyond 100

As I have mentioned before, native numbers only go up to 100, but there is no limit to the Sino numbers. Letโ€™s look at the Sino numbers beyond 100:

100๋ฐฑ (baek)
1,000์ฒœ (chun)
10,000๋งŒ (mahn)
100,000์‹ญ๋งŒ (ship-mahn)
1,000,000๋ฐฑ๋งŒ (baek-mahn)
10,000,000์ฒœ๋งŒ (chun-mahn)
100,000,000์–ต (eok)
10์‹ญ (ship)
20์ด์‹ญ (ee-ship)
30์‚ผ์‹ญ (sam-ship)
40์‚ฌ์‹ญ (sa-ship)
50์˜ค์‹ญ (oh-ship)
60์œก์‹ญ (yuk-ship)
70์น ์‹ญ (chil-ship)
80ํŒ”์‹ญ (pal-ship)
90๊ตฌ์‹ญ (gu-ship)
100๋ฐฑ (baek)

Below are some examples of random Sino numbers.

2020์ด์ฒœ ์ด์‹ญ (ee-chun-ee-ship)
133๋ฐฑ ์‚ผ์‹ญ ์‚ผ (baek-sam-ship-sam)
2,351์ด์ฒœ ์‚ผ๋ฐฑ ์˜ค์‹ญ ์ผ (ee-chun-sam-baek-oh-ship-il)
75,954์น ๋งŒ ์˜ค์ฒœ ๊ตฌ๋ฐฑ ์˜ค์‹ญ์‚ฌ (chil-mahn-oh-chun-gu-baek-oh-ship-sa)
500,000,000์˜ค์–ต (oh-eok)

Keep in mind that you would never spell out the Sino numbers in Hangul. The above tables only show how to read them. The numbers are written in the numeric form.

Which Korean number system to use? Native or Sino?

Koreans use both number systems on a regular basis. Each number system is used in different situations and for different purposes:

SinoNative
For math, dates, addresses, phone numbers, money,measurements,
time (minutes)
For counting up to 99, age, time (hour)

Letโ€™s look at some examples of native numbers in a sentence:

Native numbers

์ €๋Š” 18์‚ด ์ด์—์š”.
[์ €๋Š” ์—ด์—ฌ๋Ÿ์‚ด ์ด์—์š”]
I am 18 years old.
์šฐ๋ฆฌ์ง‘์— ๊ณ ์–‘์ด ์ผ๊ณฑ๋งˆ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ€ ์žˆ์–ด์š”.There are seven cats at our house.
์˜ค๋Š˜ ์—ฐ์Šต์„ ์„œ๋ฅธ๋ฒˆ๋„ ๋” ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”.I practiced more than 30 times today.

Notice that the age 18 is written in the numeric form. You will often see that in writing, but you should still read it as a native number ์—ด์—ฌ๋Ÿ (yeol-yeo-deol).  

Now letโ€™s look at some example sentences with Sino numbers. Sino numbers are usually written in the numeric form. The pronunciations are in brackets.

Sino numbers

2 ๋”ํ•˜๊ธฐ 4๋Š” 6 ์ด์—์š”.
[์ด ๋”ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์‚ฌ๋Š” ์œก์ด์—์š”]
2 plus 4 is 6.
์šฐ๋ฆฌ์ง‘ ์•„ํŒŒํŠธ๋Š” 34๋ฒˆ ์ด์—์š”.
[์šฐ๋ฆฌ์ง‘ ์•„ํŒŒํŠธ๋Š” ์‚ผ์‹ญ์‚ฌ๋ฒˆ ์ด์—์š”]
Our apartment is number 34.
์ œ ์ „ํ™”๋ฒˆํ˜ธ๋Š” 201-234-5678 ์ด์—์š”.
[์ œ ์ „ํ™”๋ฒˆํ˜ธ๋Š” ์ด๊ณต์ผ-์ด์‚ผ์‚ฌ-์˜ค์œก์น ํŒ” ์ด์—์š”]
My phone number is
๊ฐ€๊ฒฉ์€ 5๋ถˆ 50์ „ ์ด์—์š”.
[๊ฐ€๊ฒฉ์€ ์˜ค๋ถˆ ์˜ค์‹ญ์ „ ์ด์—์š”]
The price is 5 dollars and 50 cents.

When it comes to telling time, both the native and Sino numbers are used. Native numbers are used for the hour and Sino numbers are used for the minutes.

5:30๋‹ค์„ฏ์‹œ ์‚ผ์‹ญ๋ถ„
12:15์—ด๋‘์‹œ ์‹ญ์˜ค๋ถ„
9:00์•„ํ™‰์‹œ

I am assuming that you are thoroughly confused by now. It will take some practice to get used to using two different number systems for telling time. 

It may be easier for you to comprehend the concept if you look at the time in a different way:

  • Think of 5:30 as โ€œthe fifth hour and 30 minutesโ€
  • Think of 12:15 as โ€œthe twelfth hour and 15 minutesโ€
  • And think of 9:00 as โ€œthe ninth hourโ€

If you look at it that way, it does actually make sense, right?

Counters should be added to the numbers in sentences in Korean.

When a number is used in a sentence to indicate a number of things or people, a particle must accompany the number. These particles are often referred to as โ€œcounters.โ€ Counters are used with both native and Sino numbers.

In English sentences, we simply use the number as the adjective for the item or person that weโ€™re describing, such as ten cats, two apples, five men, etc.  In a Korean sentence, you need to state the noun first and then add the number after the noun. The counter then comes after the number. 

If you think about it, the English language also uses a similar format of number + counter when talking about money or measurements, such as 11 inches, 19 dollars and 99 cents, 120 pounds, etc. 

You can think of the counters as units for counting. The Korean language has numerous counters for every type of noun. It will be almost impossible for you to learn all the counters at once, because there are so many.  Just take one at a time as they come up and add to your vocabulary.

Here are some common Korean counters to start you off (but not a full list):

Native number counters
(up to 99, then use Sino numbers with the same counters)

๋งˆ๋ฆฌ (ma-ri)Animals: ๊ณ ์–‘์ด ์„ธ๋งˆ๋ฆฌ (three cats), ๊ฐœ ํ•œ๋งˆ๋ฆฌ (one dog)
๋ช… (myung)People (general): ๋‚จ์ž ๋‘๋ช… (two men)
๋ถ„ (boon)People (formal): ์†๋‹˜ ๋‘๋ถ„ (two guests)
๊ฐœ (gae)All things that do not have their own designated counter: ์‚ฌ๊ณผ ํ•œ๊ฐœ (one apple), ๊ณผ์ž ๋‘๊ฐœ (two cookies), ๋ชจ์ž ์„ธ๊ฐœ (three hats)
๋ฒˆ (bun)Number of times: ๋‹ค์‹œ ํ•œ๋ฒˆ (one more time), ์—ด๋ฒˆ (ten times), ๋‘ ์„ธ๋ฒˆ (two or three times)
์‹œ (shi)The hour portion of time: ํ•œ์‹œ (one oโ€™clock), ๋‘์‹œ (two oโ€™clock), ์„ธ์‹œ (three oโ€™clock)
์‹œ๊ฐ„ (shi-gan)Duration of time: ํ•œ์‹œ๊ฐ„ (one hour), ์—ด๋‘์‹œ๊ฐ„ (12 hours)
๋Œ€ (dae)Vehicles: ์ž๋™์ฐจ ๋‘๋Œ€ (two passenger cars), ํŠธ๋Ÿญ ๋‹ค์„ฏ๋Œ€ (five trucks)
์žฅ (jang)Pieces of paper: ์ข…์ด ํ•œ์žฅ (one piece of paper), ๋„๋ฐฐ์ง€ ์—ด์žฅ (ten pieces of wallpaper)
๊ถŒ (gwon)Books: ์ฑ… ์—ฌ์„ฏ๊ถŒ (six books)
์ปต (cup)Beverages that come in a glass: ๋ฌผ ํ•œ์ปต (one glass of water), ์ฃผ์Šค ๋‘์ปต (two glasses of juice)
์ž” (jahn)Beverages that come in a small cup or glass: ์ปคํ”ผ ํ•œ์ž” (one cup of coffee), ํ‹ฐ ๋‘์ž” (two cups of tea), ์†Œ์ฃผ ํ•œ์ž” (one shot of soju)
๋ณ‘ (byung)Beverages that come in a bottle: ์ฝœ๋ผ ํ•œ๋ณ‘ (one bottle of cola), ๋งฅ์ฃผ ๋‘๋ณ‘ (two bottles of beer)

Sino number counters

๋ถ„ (boon)The minutes portion of time: 30๋ถ„ (30 minutes), 40๋ถ„ (40 minutes), 15๋ถ„ (15 minutes), ์˜คํ›„ 1์‹œ 5๋ถ„ (1:15 pm)
์› (won)Won, the Korean monetary unit: 1,000์› (1,000 Won), 100,000์› (100,000 Won). *note: 1,000 Won is equivalent to approximately $1.00.
๋ถˆ (bul)American dollar: 1๋ถˆ (one dollar), 10๋ถˆ (ten dollars)
์ „ (jeon)Cents: 50์ „ (50 cents), 99์ „ (99 cents)
๋ฒˆ (bun)Assigned number to something: 3๋ฒˆ (number 3), 54๋ฒˆ (number 54)

You should also be aware that counters for Sino numbers include the units of measuring weight, length, volume, and distance.

One last thing to mention is that when the native numbers are used with a counter, the numbers 1 to 4 change in format as follows:

#Native numberWhen used with a counterExample
1ํ•˜๋‚˜ํ•œ์‚ฌ๊ณผ ํ•œ๊ฐœ (one apple)
2๋‘˜๋‘๋‚จ์ž ๋‘๋ช… (two men)
3์…‹์„ธ์„ธ์‹œ (3 oโ€™clock)
4๋„ท๋„ค์ปคํ”ผ ๋„ค์ž” (four cups of coffee)

The rest of the numbers remain in their original form even when counters are added.

Conclusion

Having to learn two different number systems at once in a new language can be overwhelming at first.  I suggest you start by memorizing the numbers 1 to 20 in both systems. I usually have my students practice saying the numbers backwards once they have mastered them in the forward order. 

Saying the numbers backwards helps you imprint each number in your head instead of just memorizing them in order.

As far as learning the counters, that will just take time. Like I mentioned before, take one at a time and master each one as you build up your vocabulary. You will get there, I promise!

REVIEW AND REPEAT DAILY, AND YOU WILL SEE PROGRESS! 
ํ™”์ดํŒ…!!

About the Author Linda McKenna

Linda was born in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to the U.S. as a teen. She previously taught at a Korean language school. She is a language enthusiast and loves learning about different languages and cultures