Zahlen 20 bis 1000

Good news first: Czech builds big numbers in the same order as English. Tens, then units, then nothing in between: dvacet pět is "twenty-five", written as two words with no hyphen. Hundreds come first, and there is no "and": sto pět is "a hundred and five".

The tens

Up to 40 the tens end in -cet, from 50 in -desát, like English -ty. Three of them are not quite what you would guess from the units: 50 is padesát (not "pětdesát"), 60 is šedesát (not "šestdesát"), 90 is devadesát (not "devětdesát"). These are the spellings learners get wrong in tests.

Hundreds change shape

English hundred never changes. Czech sto is a noun, so it is counted like one:

The pattern is the one Czech uses for every noun: after 2, 3, 4 one form, from 5 up another. Tisíc does the same: dva tisíce, but pět tisíc.

Four and twenty

There is a second way to say 21-99, with the units first: pětadvacet (five-and-twenty), dvaatřicet, jednadvacet. If that sounds odd, remember the nursery rhyme: "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie". Czechs use both orders all the time, so learn to understand pětadvacet, even if you say dvacet pět.

Prices

From 5 upwards the noun goes into the genitive plural, so with money you will mostly hear korun: pivo za padesát pět korun, vstupenka za tři sta korun. People also name the banknotes: stovka (a 100 note), pětistovka (500), tisícovka (1000). Máte drobné? Mám jen tisícovku. - "Have you got change? I've only got a thousand note." And when a Czech dictates a phone number, it often comes in groups of three, read as hundreds: 604 215 830 is šest set čtyři, dvě stě patnáct, osm set třicet.