Learn the Italian Numbers 1 to 100

Wanting to shop in an outdoor market in an Italian piazza? Exchange phone numbers with a new friend? Understand a platform change at the train station?

When it comes to everyday situations, Italian numbers are your new best friend. You may feel that counting from 1 to 100 in Italian is a mountain to climb, but we’ll help you conquer the small and big numbers with patterns that make each step simple.

Once you’ve mastered this essential part of learning Italian, you can enjoy your formaggio Parmigiano from the market— and relax because you understood exactly how much you spent before paying.

If you’re familiar with other romance languages, then counting from 1 to 10 in Italian is intuitive. Mastering these first ten numbers gives you a solid foundation for building higher numbers, so take the time to get comfortable with them.

Italian numbers 1-10 tend to take these two endings:

• o (uno, quattro, otto)
• e (due, tre, cinque, sette, nove)

Ten (dieci) and 6 (sei) are exceptions. We’ll get to them in a minute. First, it’s good to remember that these o and e endings should have a short, almost breathy sound. Especially for otto (8), open your mouth wide to make the “oh” sound at the beginning and end of the word.

Like the rest of Italian, i numeri italiani have their own movement— an up-and-down flow of pronunciation. When listening to an Italian-speaker, try to make your words follow their flow. For most numbers between 1 and 10, the “punch” or emphasis in the word comes at the beginning— “uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque…”

Ten (dieci) is different because the emphasis rises on the middle sound instead— dee-EH-chee. Notice that the letter combination ci in Italian makes the English “ch” sound as in ciao bella!

Sei (6) is another unique number. While it sounds like the English word “say”, you can draw out the ending into a longer ee sound to make it SEY-ee.

Wondering about 0? Zero is spelled the same as English but is pronounced dsee-roh.

Numbers 11-20 in Italian

You’ve got the first ten numbers down! Here’s a good rule of thumb for numbers 11-20:

• 11-16, add dici after the root number. Tre + dici = tredici (13)
• 17-19, add the root number after dici. Dici + otto = diciotto (18)

While this is a general pattern, most numbers vary slightly from it. Follow our tips below to memorise these key numbers.

For longer numbers, the emphasis falls at different places in the word. Quattordici (14) is stressed on the second syllable – kwah-TOHR-dee-chee. Quattordici fichi, per favore – fourteen figs, please…

Ready for another pro tip? When you come across the letter combination cia in Italian, the “i” becomes silent. So diciassette (17) is pronounced deech-ah-set-teh.

While Italian numbers may look long, this is because they don’t use hyphens like English. Higher numbers follow a simple pattern.

After venti (20), just add the root number directly after the tens figure. Venti + due = ventidue. The only exceptions are when adding 1 or 8. For these the vowel ending is dropped completely (“i” for venti or “a” for all other tens figures). It becomes ventuno (21) and ventotto (28), or trentuno (31) and trentotto (38).

One last thing to remember is that when adding three, the e takes an accent and becomes trentatré, quarantatré, etc.

Just like the ci in dieci, the ce in cento (100) is also pronounced with a “ch” sound.

Ordinal Numbers in Italian

Ordinal numbers come in clutch when you’re wanting to schedule a meeting or understand when something is happening. Ordinals follow their root number forms, with the exception of primo (first) which is special just because.

How to use Italian numbers in everyday life

Ready for practical tips on how to put your numbers to use in conversation?

How to say your age

Quanti anni hai? How old are you? (informal) Ho ventiquattro anni. I’m twenty-four years old.

How to say your telephone number

Qual é il tuo numero di telefono? What is your phone number? (informal) Il mio numero di telefono é… My phone number is…

How to say a price

Quanto costa/costano? How much does it/do they cost? Cinque euro. (It costs) five euros.

Note that in Italian you do not need the plural “s” on euros— just stick with saying euro no matter how much it is.

Bravissimo! You’ve arrived at 100 and are ready to take your numeri italiani to the streets. Don’t forget to listen to the melody of the words, and let your numbers flow. You’ll soon be on your way to speaking Italian with confidence.

And now you know your Italian numbers

And there you have it! Italian numbers, 1 to 100, covered.

That wasn’t so hard, right? When you set your mind to it, learning to count is as simple as uno, due, tre – that’s 1, 2, 3 in Italian, as you now know.