Hear it. Type the digits.

Chinese Number Dictation

Q: How does Chinese Number Dictation work?

Press play to hear a number spoken in Mandarin, then type it in Arabic digits — hear 三百二十五 and type 325. Pick one of six levels: 1–10, 1–100, 1–10,000, prices in yuan, years and dates, or full 11-digit mobile numbers. You can replay the audio as many times as you need before answering, and every number you miss is listed at the end with a replay button.

Q: Why are Chinese numbers hard to understand at speed?

Chinese builds numbers from explicit unit words — 十 (ten), 百 (hundred), 千 (thousand), 万 (ten thousand) — so 325 is literally three-hundred two-ten five (三百二十五). Reading that is easy; catching it at conversational speed is not, because you must hold the digits while waiting for the unit that tells you their size. Numbers are also the part of a sentence you cannot guess from context: a price, a date or a phone number is pure information. Dictation practice is the only reliable fix.

Q: How do I say prices in Chinese?

In speech, yuan is 块 (kuài) and a tenth of a yuan is 毛 (máo) — the formal 元 and 角 are mostly written. So ¥35.50 is 三十五块五毛. Note that two yuan is 两块 (liǎng kuài), not 二块: before a measure word, 2 is always 两. The Prices ¥ level in this game drills exactly this pattern.

Q: Why is 1 pronounced yāo in Chinese phone numbers?

Because 一 (yī) and 七 (qī) sound alike over a noisy phone line, Chinese speakers substitute 幺 (yāo) for 1 when reading out digit strings — phone numbers, room numbers, ID numbers and flight numbers. A mobile number like 13812345678 is read 幺三八 幺二三四 五六七八, digit by digit in 3-4-4 groups. The Phone numbers level in this game uses the real 幺 pronunciation, so it trains what you will actually hear.

Q: How are years and dates read in Chinese?

Years are read digit by digit, never as a whole number: 1998 is 一九九八年 (one-nine-nine-eight year), not 一千九百九十八年. Dates then run from the largest unit to the smallest — year, then month, then day — so 12 May 1998 is 一九九八年五月十二号. Months and days are ordinary numbers plus 月 and 号, so 五月十二号 is simply May 12th.

Q: What is the difference between 二 and 两 for the number two?

Both mean two. Use 二 (èr) when counting, reading digits aloud, and in the ones and tens place — 二十二 is 22. Use 两 (liǎng) before large unit words and measure words — 两百 (200), 两千 (2,000), 两块 (two yuan), 两个 (two of something). This game speaks the natural form, so you will hear 两千三百四十五 for 2,345 but 二十二 for 22.

A number is spoken in Mandarin — type it in digits. Six levels take you from 三 to prices, dates and full phone numbers, because numbers are the one thing in a sentence you can never guess from context.

Number Converter Pinyin Dictation

How to Play

Listen — the number plays automatically; replay it as often as you like with the big button.
Type the digits — hear 三百二十五, type 325. Commas, spaces and dashes are ignored, so 3,521 and 3521 both count.
Prices use yuan: 三十五块五毛 → 35.5. Dates follow the format hint: 1998, 5/12 or 1998/5/12.

Every number scores 10 — and your final score is multiplied by the level, so phone numbers are worth five times the 1–10 round.

Level:

Ear training

Ready to take down some numbers?

Pick a level, listen, and type what you hear in digits. Start at 1–10 to warm up your ear, then go straight for the prices and phone numbers you will actually meet.

Why Numbers Are the Last Thing You Understand

Context can't rescue you

Miss a word in a sentence and the rest of the sentence usually fills the gap. Miss a digit in a price, a date or a phone number and the information is simply gone — there is nothing to infer it from. Numbers are the one place where listening has to be exact.

The units arrive late

Chinese spells out its units — 三百二十五 is three-hundred two-ten five. That is easy on paper, but at speed you have to hold each digit while waiting for the unit that tells you how big it is. That buffering is a trainable skill, and dictation is how you train it.

Real life is level 4–6

Textbooks stop at counting to a hundred. Actual China is prices in 块 and 毛, dates read largest-unit-first, and eleven-digit mobile numbers where 1 becomes 幺. The last three levels here are the ones that pay off on day one.

Number Cheat Sheet

The unit words

10	十	shí	二十五 → `25`
100	百	bǎi	三百二十五 → `325`
1,000	千	qiān	三千五百 → `3500`
10,000	万	wàn	一万 → `10000`
0	零	líng	一百零一 → `101`

One 零 covers any run of internal zeros, and trailing zeros are dropped entirely — which is why 一百零一 is 101 but 一百一十 is 110.

The three traps in this game

二 vs 两 — counting uses 二 (二十二 = 22), but before a big unit or measure word it is 两: 两百, 两千, 两块.
Money is 块/毛 — spoken yuan is 块, a tenth is 毛. 三十五块五毛 → 35.5. The written 元/角 rarely gets said aloud.
1 becomes 幺 (yāo) in phone and room numbers, because 一 yī and 七 qī are too easy to confuse on a bad line.
Years go digit by digit — 1998 is 一九九八年, never 一千九百九十八年.

Want to check a number in writing? The Chinese Number Converter turns any figure into everyday numerals, formal banker's numerals and pinyin.

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