So I'm been looking at counting recently, particularly larger numbers and i just wanted to see if i could get a few of things confirmed.

Question the first; I know the characters for hundred, thousand and ten thousand are 百 千 and 万 respectively, but when i want to write 100, 1000 and 10000, do i write 百 千 and 万 OR 一百 一千 and 一万

Question the second; If i want to write a number with an 0 in it, for example, 3004, how do i write it? 三千零零四？

Question the third; While I try and avoid paying attention to anything google translate says, when I type in 二百七 instead of 二百七十 it still came up as 270. Is this some form of short hand...maybe how I'm supposed to write it?

Question the fourth; Similarly, i try to take anything i read on wikipedia with a pinch of salt, but while looking through it, i found a piece that said "In Mandarin, the multiplier 兩 (liǎng) is often used rather than 二 (èr) for all numbers greater than 200 with the "2" numeral" for example 二百／两百 or 二千／两千
Is this something seen often/worth remembering and teaching others?

Thanks for any answers :D

I really needed to study this too, so I've dragged out my untouched grammar tome.

1. Yes, it's like English - you need the 一. 100 is 一百, 3000 is 三千.

2. 3055 would be 三千零五十五.
However you only ever use the 零 once, so your example of 3004 would be 三千零四.
A bit more confusing, but you can also replace the 'tens' column with a 零. So 3102 would be 三千一百零二. I think this 零 isn't optional for reasons which I will answer part 3..

3. To say 270 you say 两百七. This is just how it's said. People will understand you if you add a 十 after, but this is just how it's said. So for that reason I think you need the 零 in 3102 ／ 三千一百零二.

4. You can use both 两 or 二. 二 may be slightly more regional, but everyone says it.

My own ponderings:
If 204 is 两百零四
and 3004 is 三千零四
Then 3040 must be 三千零四十 - yes?

Also, for dates and phone numbers just read the numbers individually.

In the north, when reading a telephone number, and I think license plates, instead of 一 they say yao. It is first tone, but since they would right 一 I am afraid I don't know which character it is. There is the concern that 七 and 一 can easily get confused since they sound so similar.

yao1 is 幺 I think.

1. Correct, 一百，一千，一万，一亿，etc
2. 三千零四
3. 二百七 is shorthand for 270. 207 = 二百零七/两百零七
4. 两 is extremely common. You should know it and use it yourself. 20202 = 两万零两百零二

3040 is 三千零四十.
yao1 is written 幺.

Also, remember that whenever a number between 10 and 19 occurs as part of a larger number, it is usually read 一十X

113 = 一百一十三
1014 = 一千零一十四

@west316: yao would be 幺. In 军语, you can use 幺 for 一, 洞 for 零, 拐 for 7, and 勾 for 9.

念成：幺、两、叁、肆、伍、六、拐、八、勾、洞。

more here: http://cidian.iask.sina.com.cn/article_browse.php?title=%E7%DB

While we're talking about numbers, if you ever plan on doing banking in China (or anything related to monetary transactions), you'd better learn the 大写数字, used because they are difficult to forge (you don't want people adding strokes to your 十 yuan tip ;) )

小写：零 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十 百 千 万
大写：零 壹 贰 叁 肆 伍 陆 柒 捌 玖 拾 百 仟 万

Thanks for your input guys, never realised there was so much to know about numbers xD

Gonna take some work to remember all that...

@cbjartli There's a list for that: http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjws90DDA

James

I'm thinking it might be worth setting up an Anki deck that displays Arabic numbers and asks for the characters / pinyin for them. As with a lot of language stuff, I think heavy repetition is probably the best way to attack it.

Does anyone know of a large table of Chinese numbers with their Arabic versions? It'd be useful for making the deck.

Further note - while most Western languages count in sets of 3 numerals (i.e. 333,333 = three hundred thirty-three thousand | three hundred thirty three), the Chinese count in sets of four, so 33,333,333 would be 三千三百三十三万三千三百三十三, to use a simple (but long) example.

The first set of four is singles and isn't indicated by an extra number, the second set of four (the ten-thousands) is indicated by 万 - wan4, and the third set of four (the 100 millions) is indicated by 亿 - yi4. I don't know what comes after that, but, as most of us don't need to count in the trillions, I think you'll be fine without learning it.

There's more to the use of 零 in counting than has been stated here yet, as well, but I haven't dealt with that in a while, so I can't recall exactly how it works - you never need to use more than one zero together unless you're listing off the individual numbers (such as a phone number or a year, which would be 二零一零年 instead of 两千零一十年), and I believe you never need to say 零 in the ones column or in any series of zeros beginning in the ones column, so 3330 would be 三千三百三十, and 30,000 would simply be 三万.

"I believe you never need to say 零 in the ones column" - The only exception I can think of is for decimals. 零点一 is 0.1 and if I remember correctly, 零点零三零零四 is the correct way to write 0.03004.

About 幺 , is this a trad/simp character? I ran across it in my studies here as "yao1" for "short, tiny, one" but I'm having trouble cross referencing it.