This week, we’ll continue our lessons on the English expression of numbers by looking at the words for 1000 to 999,999. As with last week’s lessons, we’ll be breaking these words down into manageable chunks, explaining each group of numbers before moving on to the next. This lesson builds on the previous lesson. If you are not familiar with counting from 0 to 999 in English, we recommend reading that lesson before beginning this one.
1000s
Four digit numbers are counted with the word “thousand”:
| 1000 | One thousand | 6000 | Six thousand |
| 2000 | Two thousand | 7000 | Seven thousand |
| 3000 | Three thousand | 8000 | Eight thousand |
| 4000 | Four thousand | 9000 | Nine thousand |
| 5000 | Five thousand |
When the final two numbers of a four digit number are 0s, native English speakers sometimes express these numbers in terms of hundreds instead of thousands. For example:
| 1200 | One thousand two hundred | Twelve hundred |
| 1600 | One thousand six hundred | Sixteen hundred |
| 3500 | Three thousand five hundred | Thirty-five hundred |
| 4300 | Four thousand three hundred | Forty-three hundred |
| 7700 | Seven thousand seven hundred | Seventy-seven hundred |
| 9400 | Nine thousand four hundred | Ninety-four hundred |
Many native speakers use these alternate expressions when speaking because they find them easier to pronounce than the primary ones. In general, you should avoid using them when writing, especially when money is involved. For, example, you would write out $1400 on a check as “one thousand four hundred dollars,” NOT “fourteen hundred dollars.”
10,000
Five digit numbers are expressed in terms of tens of thousands:
| 10,000 | One thousand | 60,000 | Six thousand |
| 20,000 | Two thousand | 70,000 | Seven thousand |
| 30,000 | Three thousand | 80,000 | Eight thousand |
| 40,000 | Four thousand | 90,000 | Nine thousand |
| 50,000 | Five thousand |
Note that while a comma is used to separate the numerals themselves into groups of 3, native English speakers usually do not include the comma unless a number contains five or more digits.
100,000
Just as five digit numbers are expressed in tens of thousands, six digit numbers are expressed in terms of hundreds of thousands.
| 100,000 | One hundred thousand | 600,000 | Six hundred thousand |
| 200,000 | Two hundred thousand | 700,000 | Seven hundred thousand |
| 300,000 | Three hundred thousand | 800,000 | Eight hundred thousand |
| 400,000 | Four hundred thousand | 900,000 | Nine hundred thousand |
| 500,000 | Five hundred thousand |
By combining what we’ve learned about numbers from this lesson and the previous one, we can express all of the numbers up to 999, 999. Here are some examples from 1000 to 999, 999.
| 1327 | One thousand three hundred twenty-seven |
| 1700 | One thousand seven hundred (Seventeen hundred) |
| 5044 | Five thousand forty-four |
| 10,058 | Ten thousand fifty-eight |
| 12,200 | Twelve thousand two hundred |
| 16,305 | Sixteen thousand three hundred five |
| 203,000 | Two hundred three thousand |
| 794,568 | Seven hundred ninety-four thousand five hundred sixty-eight |
| 999,999 | Nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine |
