chinesisms

Mr. Tan., a telemarketer of a discount club firm, generously shared his know-how in counting Fookien and Mandarin without getting any sales from my end. Well, this was further confirmed to be correct by Maxx as we walked home. Another version emerged when I had to upload the numbers through my E-marketing personal website project from Ms. Ngo. Well after so much of nose bleed, the knowledge paid off while having coffee at Cafe Breton, Greenbelt with 2 Fil-Chi friends. A few price rates where exchanged in Chinese and I felt a second notch of excitement when I completely understood the price Mr. M was talking about even before he paused to translate the number to me. Let’s post the Fookien version here as future reference for my forgetful mind:

(1) Tsit,
(2) Di,
(3) Sa,
(4) Si,
(5) Go,
(6) Lak,
(7) Chit,
(8) Pwe,
(9) Kaw,
[and]
(10) Chap!

Above is how we count in cumulative form such as when we tell prices. To make this in hundreds, we simply add ~pa after each word. For example, we say tsit pa for 100, di pa for 200, sa pa for 300,.. and so on. However, we cannot use pa as a single word just as how hundred itself is used in English. Next, we do not say tsap-pa since this is already considered a thousand. We now move to the second level which is tiyaw, so we say we have 1,000 by saying tsit (one) tiyaw (thousand).

If you are wondering how we say 11, 12, 13,.. 21, 22, 23,… 31, 32, 33,.. and so on, we simply say the chap tsit for 11, chap di for 12, chap sa for 13,… di chap tsit for 21, di chap di for 22, di chap sa for 23,… sa chap tsit for 31, sa chap di for 32, sa chap sa for 33,.. and so on.

For additional references in speaking Chinese, we recommend visiting these free online tutorials:
Learn Hokkien (Taiwanese, similar to Fookien)
Chinese Pod (Mandarin with conversations)
Zap Chinese (Mandarin with strict audio)