contare in italiano

Counting in Italian

Every Italian number is a chain of the same few parts, largest first, written as one word. Learn the parts, learn the three adjustments at the joins, and you can count to a million.

Updated 8 October 2026

millenovecentottantotto

Written in Italy as 1.988

  • The ten drops its last vowel before otto: ottantotto.
  • cento loses its o before ottanta: centottanta.
  • One thousand is mille, with no un in front, and mille keeps its e before a vowel (milleuno, milleotto).

The parts

PartWords
Units and teensuno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, dieci, undici, dodici, tredici, quattordici, quindici, sedici, diciassette, diciotto, diciannove
Tensventi, trenta, quaranta, cinquanta, sessanta, settanta, ottanta, novanta
Hundredscento, with a unit in front from 200: duecento, trecento, novecento
Thousandsmille for 1,000; a number + mila above it: duemila, diecimila, trecentomila
Millionun milione, a separate noun

The order: largest first, all in one word

Each number is read from the left, just as the figure is, and the parts are written together.

FigurePartsItalian
47quaranta + settequarantasette
81ottant(a) + unoottantuno
365tre + cento + sessanta + cinquetrecentosessantacinque
708sette + cento + ottosettecentootto
1,492mille + quattro + cento + novanta + duemillequattrocentonovantadue
2,026due + mila + venti + seiduemilaventisei
53,283cinquanta + tre + mila + due + cent(o) + ottanta + trécinquantatremiladuecentottantatré

The three adjustments at the joins

1. A ten loses its last vowel before uno or ottoventi + uno is ventuno, ottanta + otto is ottantotto. It happens inside bigger numbers too: trecentoventuno, quarantottomila.
2. cento loses its o before ottanta, but keeps it before uno and ottocentottanta and quattrocentottanta, but centouno and centootto. Treccani’s Enciclopedia dell’Italiano calls elision after cento uncommon before uno, otto and undici, so centotto exists but is the rarer form. mille does not elide: milleuno, milleottocento.
3. A final tre is written tréOnly at the very end of the word, where the stress falls: cinquantatré, duemilatré, but cinquantatremila, where the stress has moved on.

Counting aloud in class

Counting runs are the quickest check that a class has the joins: going from diciannove to venti to ventuno, or from novantanove to cento to centouno, is where the rules show. The worksheet generator’s Fill the gaps exercise builds runs of six with two missing, and every other run straddles one of those crossings. Above 1,000 the runs step in hundreds or thousands, so pupils practise duemila, duemilacento, duemiladuecento.

Questions teachers ask

How do you count in Italian past 20?

Say the ten, then the unit, as one word: ventuno, ventidue, ventitré, up to ventinove, then trenta and the same again. Above 100 the hundreds go first (centoventi, duecentoventi) and above 1,000 the thousands go first (milleduecento, duemiladuecento). The order runs from largest to smallest, as in English.

Do Italians say "and" in numbers like English "one hundred and five"?

Not in the standard written form: 105 is centocinque and 1,100 is millecento. Treccani lists mille e uno and mille e cento as variants beside milleuno and millecento, and the e appears in set phrases such as Le mille e una notte, the Thousand and One Nights. Sheets on this site print the joined forms.

What is the longest Italian number below a million?

Up to a million the longest is 454,454, quattrocentocinquantaquattromilaquattrocentocinquantaquattro, at 60 letters; below 1,000 it is 454, quattrocentocinquantaquattro, at 28. Type either into the speller on this page. The worksheet generator gives numbers above 1,000 a full-width line so they fit on an A4 page.

Sources