cento: the hundreds
cento stands alone for 100; from 200 a unit goes in front: duecento, novecento. What follows joins on directly. Where the next part begins with a vowel, Italian usage splits, and Treccani’s Enciclopedia dell’Italiano describes it: before uno, otto and undici the elision is uncommon (centouno, rarely centuno; centootto, rarely centotto), while before ottanta the o goes (centottanta).
| Figure | Italian |
|---|---|
| 100 | cento |
| 101 | centouno |
| 103 | centotré |
| 108 | centootto |
| 111 | centoundici |
| 120 | centoventi |
| 180 | centottanta |
| 188 | centottantotto |
| 200 | duecento |
| 300 | trecento |
| 468 | quattrocentosessantotto |
| 500 | cinquecento |
| 999 | novecentonovantanove |
mille and mila: the thousands
| Figure | As Italy writes it | Italian |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 1.000 | mille |
| 1,001 | 1.001 | milleuno |
| 1,008 | 1.008 | milleotto |
| 1,100 | 1.100 | millecento |
| 1,800 | 1.800 | milleottocento |
| 2,000 | 2.000 | duemila |
| 2,026 | 2.026 | duemilaventisei |
| 10,000 | 10.000 | diecimila |
| 21,000 | 21.000 | ventunomila |
| 23,000 | 23.000 | ventitremila |
| 100,000 | 100.000 | centomila |
| 101,000 | 101.000 | centounomila |
| 200,000 | 200.000 | duecentomila |
| 1,000,000 | 1.000.000 | un milione |
Italy separates thousands with a point and decimals with a comma, the opposite of English: 1.000 is a thousand and 2,5 is two and a half. The prices page shows the comma in use.
un milione, un miliardo
milione and miliardo are nouns. They need a number in front (un milione, tre miliardi), they have a plural, and they take di before a noun: un milione di abitanti, due miliardi di euro. That is why the worksheets on this site stop at 1,000,000: above it the number is no longer one word.
| Value | Italian (long scale) | English (short scale) |
|---|---|---|
| 106 | un milione | a million |
| 109 | un miliardo | a billion |
| 1012 | un bilione (mille miliardi) | a trillion |
| 1018 | un trilione | a quintillion |
The Accademia della Crusca sets out the two scales: English uses the short scale, where each new name is a thousand times the last, and Italy the long scale, where the -one and -ardo names alternate. So bilione and trilione are false friends, and a newspaper’s “a trillion dollars” is mille miliardi di dollari.
Practice
The worksheet generator has ranges for 100 to 1,000, 1,000 to 10,000 and 10,000 to 1,000,000, and counting runs that step in hundreds and thousands across mille, duemila and centomila. To see any number built part by part, use the speller on counting in Italian.