Hindi/Numbers

Numbers are the basic of Mathematics. Strange that Hindi numbers are unorganized unlike Sanskrit and other Southern Indian languages. Like other Sanskrit derived/Indian languages, Hindi numbers also follow decimal format.

Cardinals
Hindi cardinal numbers up to 100 have no specific standardization. Up to 20, the numbers are unique. After that each tenth number (such as 30, 40 etc) is unique. The rest of the numbers take the form of prefix of incremental digit and the base of preceding tenth number. However these prefixes and bases vary slightly and in a random manner. Although the pattern isn't regular, don't worry too much. They're just slightly different and with some practice you'd soon get the hang of it. Here are the numbers from 21 to 100. Try to follow them and find any similar pattern.

Once you have got through the numbers 1-100 the rest of the numbers are regular.

Another point to be noted in Hindi in case of cardinal numbers is that Hindi (and all other Indic languages) often use quantities like lakh and crore which are less common in English speaking countries. The opposite is true for quantities like million, billion (We are talking about the US billion which is 1 followed by 9 zeros, not the UK billion which is 1 followed by 12 zeros.), trillion etc.

Ordinals
Hindi ordinals are a piece of cake once you are thorough with the cardinals. Only the first six ordinals are unique.

As you would have noticed by now that in Hindi 'वां' acts just like 'th' in English which you can add to the end of cardinal numbers to form the corresponding ordinal numbers. If you're wondering about the irregularities of the second options, then let us just tell you that they are the Sanskrit ordinal numbers that are used often in Hindi. You just have to remember ten of them (for they sometimes appear in texts/speeches). After ten, any ordinal numbers you would encounter would be most likely in the general form of ordinal number+vāṃ