Numbers in German

From 13 to 19 German adds -zehn to the unit (dreizehn), but sechzehn and siebzehn drop letters. From 21 the order flips: einundzwanzig is “one-and-twenty”. Dreißig is the only ten spelled with ß. Ordinals add -te up to 19 and -ste from 20 (der zwanzigste), with erste, dritte, siebte and achte as the irregular ones. News writes most numbers as digits, which is why the teens and tens fall outside the top 5,000. Of these 41 words, 24 are among the 5,000 most common; the other 17 are basic words, marked with a dash.

Updated September 202641 wordsAudio on every wordFree to browse
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RankGermanEnglishPart of speechCEFRExampleAudio
210 erste first adjective A1 Das war meine erste Reise nach Asien.
657 zweite second adjective A1 Die zweite Tür links ist das Bad.
917 dritte third adjective A2 Das ist schon die dritte Tasse Kaffee heute.
— halb half adjective A1 Wir treffen uns um halb acht.
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