Tibetan numerals

Tibetan numerals are the way numbers are written and counted in the Tibetan language. They are part of the Tibetan script and are similar to the numbers most of us use every day, known as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. This system helps people count up to very big numbers by using a base-10 method, meaning each place value is ten times bigger than the one before it.

These numbers are special because they were also used as a base for another set of numbers — the Mongolian numerals. This shows how ideas about counting can travel and be used by different cultures. Learning about Tibetan numerals helps us understand how different places think about and use numbers in their everyday lives.

Cardinal numbers

Extended numbers

Tibetan numbers larger than 20 use special words to connect the first and second parts of the number. Each set of ten has its own special word: རྩ for 21-29, སོ for 31-39, ཞེ for 41-49, ང for 51-59, རེ for 61-69, དོན for 71-79, གྱ for 81-89, and གོ for 91-99. Sometimes, ཉེར is used instead of རྩ. These special words help make numbers easier to say without using the full name of the second part (for example, སོ་གཉིས for 32 instead of སུམ་བཅུ་སོ་གཉིས). These special words are not used for numbers that end in 0. To show a number ends in zero, you can add ཐམ་པ at the end (like བཞི་བཅུ་ཐམ་པ or བརྒྱ་ཐམ་པ). For numbers with three or more digits, the words དང (when written) and ར (when spoken) are used to separate the parts (for example, ཉིས་བརྒྱ་དང་བརྒྱད་ཅུ་གྱ་གཉིས or ཉིས་བརྒྱ་ར་བརྒྱད་ཅུ་གྱ་གཉིས for 282). If the third digit is zero in a number with four or more digits, it is shown with the phrase བརྒྱ་མེད, meaning "without hundred" (like ཉིས་སྟོང་བརྒྱ་མེད་དང་ཉི་ཤུ་ཉེར་ལྔ).

Ordinals

Fractions

Tibetan numerals have special symbols in Unicode to show fractions. These symbols look like slashes between numbers. But we don’t know exactly what they mean or if they were really used in the past.