How to use 万、亿
Number + 万 / 亿
Large Mandarin numbers organize around units that differ from everyday English grouping. 万 represents ten thousand, and 亿 represents one hundred million. Thinking in groups of four digits helps identify how many of each unit a number contains, instead of relying only on the three-digit comma groups common in English notation.
Within each group, the familiar tens, hundreds, and thousands still apply. Work from the largest unit down and pay attention to internal gaps that call for 零. Short conversational forms sometimes omit a final place-value unit, so they need context. For clear reading and learning, full forms make the arithmetic easier to check and reduce uncertainty about the amount intended.
Examples with pinyin and English
一百万
1 million
十四亿
1.4 billion
五万两千一百五十二
52,152
二百九十一万四千六百八十
2,914,680
What to remember
- Group digits mentally in sets of four.
- 万 is ten thousand; 亿 is a hundred million.
- Prefer full forms when precision matters.
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Source and editorial notes
Explanation rewritten for Laowai. Examples are adapted from the Laowai English grammar curriculum, with editorial corrections where needed. The original curriculum credits AllSet Learning’s Chinese Grammar Wiki as used with permission. Read the retained source credits.
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