This week, we’ll continue our lessons on the English expression of numbers by looking at the words for 1000 to 999,999. As with last week’s lessons, we’ll be breaking these words down into manageable chunks, explaining each group of numbers before moving on to the next. This lesson builds on the previous lesson. If you are not familiar with counting from 0 to 999 in English, we recommend reading that lesson before beginning this one.

 

1000s

Four digit numbers are counted with the word “thousand”:

 

1000	One thousand	6000	Six thousand
2000	Two thousand	7000	Seven thousand
3000	Three thousand	8000	Eight thousand
4000	Four thousand	9000	Nine thousand
5000	Five thousand

 

When the final two numbers of a four digit number are 0s, native English speakers sometimes express these numbers in terms of hundreds instead of thousands. For example:

 

1200	One thousand two hundred	Twelve hundred
1600	One thousand six hundred	Sixteen hundred
3500	Three thousand five hundred	Thirty-five hundred
4300	Four thousand three hundred	Forty-three hundred
7700	Seven thousand seven hundred	Seventy-seven hundred
9400	Nine thousand four hundred	Ninety-four hundred

 

Many native speakers use these alternate expressions when speaking because they find them easier to pronounce than the primary ones. In general, you should avoid using them when writing, especially when money is involved. For, example, you would write out $1400 on a check as “one thousand four hundred dollars,” NOT “fourteen hundred dollars.”

 

10,000

Five digit numbers are expressed in terms of tens of thousands:

 

10,000	One thousand	60,000	Six thousand
20,000	Two thousand	70,000	Seven thousand
30,000	Three thousand	80,000	Eight thousand
40,000	Four thousand	90,000	Nine thousand
50,000	Five thousand

 

Note that while a comma is used to separate the numerals themselves into groups of 3, native English speakers usually do not include the comma unless a number contains five or more digits.

 

100,000

Just as five digit numbers are expressed in tens of thousands, six digit numbers are expressed in terms of hundreds of thousands.

 

100,000	One hundred thousand	600,000	Six hundred thousand
200,000	Two hundred thousand	700,000	Seven hundred thousand
300,000	Three hundred thousand	800,000	Eight hundred thousand
400,000	Four hundred thousand	900,000	Nine hundred thousand
500,000	Five hundred thousand

 

By combining what we’ve learned about numbers from this lesson and the previous one, we can express all of the numbers up to 999, 999. Here are some examples from 1000 to 999, 999.

 

1327	One thousand three hundred twenty-seven
1700	One thousand seven hundred (Seventeen hundred)
5044	Five thousand forty-four
10,058	Ten thousand fifty-eight
12,200	Twelve thousand two hundred
16,305	Sixteen thousand three hundred five
203,000	Two hundred three thousand
794,568	Seven hundred ninety-four thousand five hundred sixty-eight
999,999	Nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine