A helpful, free resource to learn Urdu numbers from 1-100

Urdu numbers are hard. We joke about them, make memes about them. Many young diaspora don’t know them, many young people in the motherland don’t even know them.

But when you think about it, isn’t it shameful to claim to speak a language, but be unable to count in it past 10? In what other language/culture is this okay?

But where to start? Sometimes in language learning, you just have to put in the hard yards and do what many abhor - rote memorisation! To aid in this, I’ve put together this table which lists Urdu numbers from one to one hundred. When the numbers are all laid out like this, one can easily pick out patterns to aid in memorisation. For example, almost all the decimals (sets of 10) have a pattern indicated in the suffix, and this pattern starts at the preceding 9. So, all the numbers in the 20’s share the same suffix pattern, but this pattern starts at 19, and ends at 28 - before the next pattern for the 30’s starts at 29. It’s admittedly a bit tricky, but there’s a logic hidden here buried in the Sanskrit origins of the language. You’ll get the hang of it.

The table has five columns:

-English/Western numerals

-Traditional Urdu numerals

-English numbers (ie. one, two)

-Urdu numbers transliterated into English

-Urdu numbers in Urdu script

You can access the resource here!

P.S - Try memorising 10 numbers a week. You’ll get there in no time … or 10 weeks, to be precise!