Números grandes y ordinales
Lesson 17 got you as far as cien and left you there. Today the numbers keep climbing, and they pick up two habits on the way: from doscientos up the hundreds agree in gender like adjectives — doscientos pesos but doscientas personas — and millón always drags a de behind it, un millón de pesos, where mil takes nothing at all. Then the trap nobody warns you about: un billón is not a billion. English's billion is mil millones, and the difference is three zeros of somebody's money. The second half is the ordinals, primero through décimo, with the one irregularity worth drilling — primero and tercero lose their -o in front of a masculine singular noun, so it is el primer día and el tercer piso — and the good news that past tenth almost nobody uses ordinals at all.
Cien, ciento, and the hundreds that agree
Exactly one hundred is cien, and it never moves: cien pesos, cien personas, cien mil, cien millones. Put anything smaller after it and it stretches into ciento: ciento uno, ciento veinte, ciento cincuenta y tres. Notice there is no y between the hundred and the ten — a number like ciento treinta y dos carries exactly one y, and it sits between the ten and the unit. From two hundred up, the hundreds behave like adjectives and agree with whatever they are counting: doscientos, trescientos, cuatrocientos, quinientos, seiscientos, setecientos, ochocientos, novecientos, every one of them swapping -os for -as in front of a feminine noun. doscientos pesos but doscientas personas; cuatrocientos libros but cuatrocientas casas. Three of the nine are irregular, and they are the three learners get wrong: 500 is quinientos, never cincocientos; 700 is setecientos, never sietecientos; 900 is novecientos, never nuevecientos. Say those three out loud a few more times than the rest. The agreement survives deep inside a long number, too — quinientas treinta y dos mujeres — and uno goes on shortening the way it always has: doscientos un pesos, doscientas una sillas.
Mil, millones, and the de
mil is the plainest number in the language. No un in front of it — mil pesos, and un mil pesos is not Spanish — and no plural while it is counting: dos mil, quince mil, cien mil, novecientos mil. It refuses to agree as well: dos mil personas, never dos milas. It only grows an -es when it stops being a number and turns into a vague quantity, and then it needs de: miles de personas, miles de pesos. A million flips every one of those rules. un millón keeps its un, it does pluralize — dos millones, cinco millones — and it always pulls de in before a noun: un millón de pesos, tres millones de habitantes, medio millón de dólares. That missing de is the most audible mistake in this lesson: un millón pesos is broken Spanish. The contrast is easy to hold on to — mil never takes de, millón always does. The one place the de disappears is when another number comes between the million and the noun, because they are no longer touching: un millón doscientos mil pesos.
Un billón is not a billion
Here is a false friend that has cost people real money. In Spanish — in every country of the region, and in Spain too — un millón is a thousand thousands and un billón is a million millions: a one with twelve zeros. English's billion, the one with nine, is mil millones. So a company worth two billion dollars is worth dos mil millones de dólares, and if you say dos billones you have just multiplied it by a thousand. The word un millardo exists for the English billion and shows up occasionally in the financial press, but nobody says it out loud. Below that everything is straightforward: mil quinientos, veinte mil, cien mil, quinientos mil. Big numbers are daily life here, because a Colombian or Chilean price tag runs into five and six figures without anything unusual happening — treinta mil pesos for lunch in Bogotá is an ordinary lunch, and a month's rent is counted in the millions. Two colloquial shortcuts to recognize rather than use: una luca is a thousand pesos in Chile, Colombia and Argentina, and un palo is a million in Colombia and Argentina. And recall from lesson 17 that the marks themselves move across the map: Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Central America and the Caribbean write 1,250.50, while Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay write 1.250,50.
Years and centuries
Years are read whole, never split into halves the way English does with 'nineteen eighty-five'. 1985 is mil novecientos ochenta y cinco. 2024 is dos mil veinticuatro. 1810 is mil ochocientos diez. There is no y after mil, and placing yourself in a year needs nothing but en: Nací en mil novecientos noventa y dos. La empresa abrió en dos mil ocho. You can add the noun for clarity — en el año dos mil ocho — and both versions are perfectly normal. Decades take a plural article and the bare ten: los ochenta, los noventa, los años setenta, as in la música de los ochenta. Centuries are written in Roman numerals and read as ordinary counting numbers from twenty-one down to about ten: el siglo XXI is el siglo veintiuno, el siglo XX is el siglo veinte. The early ones keep their ordinals in careful speech — el siglo IX is el siglo noveno — but nobody will blink at el siglo nueve. Dates themselves you already have from lesson 18 and nothing here changes them: el plus the plain counting number plus de plus the month, el cinco de mayo, el dieciséis de septiembre, with the first of the month as the single ordinal in the whole system — el primero de enero.
Ordinals from primero to décimo
primero, segundo, tercero, cuarto, quinto, sexto, séptimo, octavo, noveno, décimo. They are adjectives, so they agree in gender and number like any other: la primera vez, los primeros días, la tercera calle, las segundas oportunidades. Two of them do something extra, and it is the one piece of this lesson worth drilling until it is automatic: primero and tercero drop their final -o in front of a masculine singular noun. el primer día, el primer piso, el tercer hijo, el tercer intento — while the feminine stays whole, la primera semana, la tercera vez, and so does the plural, los primeros meses. Standing alone with no noun behind them, they keep the -o: Llegué primero. Quedó tercero. Where do these actually earn their keep? Rank and order: el primer lugar, el segundo lugar, quedar en tercer lugar. Sequence in speech, where primero works as an adverb meaning first of all: Primero comemos y después vemos. Fixed names: la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el Tercer Mundo. And the phrase you will reach for constantly, por primera vez — Fui a Cusco por primera vez el año pasado.
From eleventh on — and which floor is that
Past décimo the ordinals technically continue — undécimo, duodécimo, decimotercero — and in practice almost nobody uses them. Spanish switches to the plain counting number and parks it after the noun: el piso quince, el capítulo veinte, la fila doce, el kilómetro treinta. Even at eleven and twelve people prefer this: el piso once is what you say, while el undécimo piso sounds like a legal document read aloud. What you will actually hear in casual speech is el onceavo piso, built out of a fraction ending, which careful writers dislike and which half of Mexico and Colombia says anyway — recognize it, and reach for el piso once yourself, since that is safe everywhere. Now the practical half, because this is as much a lesson about floors as about numbers: street level does not have the same name across the region. In Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay it is la planta baja, marked PB on the buttons, and el primer piso is one flight up. In Colombia, Peru, Chile and much of Central America the street level itself is el primer piso, and the buttons start at 1. So ask ¿En qué piso? and hold the answer loosely, because it is a genuinely different floor depending on where you are standing. The machine is el elevador in Mexico and Central America and el ascensor across South America.
La mitad, los tercios y el por ciento
la mitad is half as a noun: la mitad de los estudiantes, la mitad del pastel, Me comí la mitad. medio is half as an adjective, sitting in front with no article at all: media hora, medio kilo, medio millón. Then the fractions proper. un tercio is a third and un cuarto a quarter, and both pluralize normally: dos tercios, tres cuartos. Keep un tercio apart from el tercero — one letter, two different jobs, a fraction against an ordinal. From a fifth to a tenth the fraction simply borrows the ordinal: un quinto, un sexto, un octavo, un décimo. Above ten it takes the ending -avo: un onceavo, un doceavo, un veinteavo. Percentages need an article where English uses none: el treinta por ciento de los clientes, el ochenta por ciento de la población, and an indefinite one when it is just an amount, un veinte por ciento más caro. It is two words, por ciento — the run-together porciento turns up in print constantly and is not the standard spelling; the noun for a percentage is el porcentaje. Shop windows all over the region announce treinta por ciento de descuento. Finally the multiples, el doble and el triple, which pair with que for comparisons and de for amounts: Gana el doble que yo. Cuesta el triple de lo que pagué.
Las palabras de hoy
el edificio is anything built bigger than a house — un edificio de oficinas, un edificio de departamentos, which is where people live across most of the region, since the apartment itself is el departamento. Inside it, el piso is the floor you stand on or the storey of the building and never the apartment. el equipo carries the team and the equipment at once: el equipo de fútbol, el equipo de trabajo, el equipo de sonido, and trabajar en equipo is teamwork. el cliente is the customer in a store and the client of a lawyer with no change of word; la clienta is ordinary in Mexico and Colombia, la cliente is the more formal shape, and all of them together are la clientela. ganar does three English jobs — to earn, Gana bien; to win, Ganamos el partido; and to beat somebody, Le ganamos a Chile. The winner is el ganador or la ganadora, and the opposite verb is perder. Europa takes no article, like América and Asia, and its adjective is lowercase europeo; remember that América in this region names the whole landmass, so somebody from the United States is estadounidense. And bienvenido agrees with whoever you are greeting: Bienvenido to one man, Bienvenida to one woman, Bienvenidas to a group of women, Bienvenidos to everyone else — which is the sign at every airport, and the form you use for ustedes, the only plural you this region has, whether they are your friends or complete strangers.
