Greek Numbers 1 to 100: Modern Greek Counting

Greek numbers 0 to 20

Start with zero to twenty, because these are the building blocks for almost every larger number you'll ever say. Learn this block well and the rest of counting in Greek is mostly assembly. Here is the full set, with the Greek script, a transliteration you can read at a glance, and a rough English-sounding pronunciation. Stress falls on the syllable in capitals.

A few things are worth pointing out right away, because they save you from confusion later. First, seven, eight, and nine each have two accepted forms in Modern Greek. The everyday spoken ones are εφτά, οχτώ, and εννιά, while the more formal or written forms are επτά (eptá), οκτώ (októ), and εννέα (ennéa). You'll hear both, and using the spoken versions makes you sound natural, so those are the ones in the table. Learn to recognize the formal forms too, since they show up on signs, in the news, and in careful speech.

Second, look at how eleven through nineteen are made. Eleven and twelve, έντεκα and δώδεκα, are their own special words, the same way English has its own eleven and twelve instead of oneteen and twoteen. From thirteen up, though, Greek is beautifully regular. You just glue δεκα (deka, ten) onto the front of the unit: δεκα plus τρία gives δεκατρία, thirteen. δεκα plus πέντε gives δεκαπέντε, fifteen. There is no vowel change and no irregular join to memorize, so once you can count to nine, the teens cost you almost nothing.

Third, notice that these are written as single words. δεκατρία is one word, thirteen. That changes at twenty one, where Greek switches to writing the parts separately, and we'll get to that in the compounds section. For now, drill zero to twenty until you can rattle them off without looking, because everything above rests on this foundation.

A quick word on pronunciation

Before we pile on more numbers, it helps to sort out a few sounds, because Greek spelling maps to sound very consistently once you know the tricks. Numbers are a great place to meet these sounds, since you'll repeat them constantly.

• δ is a soft "th." The letter δ, which opens δύο (two) and δέκα (ten), is the th in "this" or "the," not a hard d. So δύο is closer to "THEE-o" with a gentle buzzing th than to "dee-o." This one trips up almost every beginner, so give it attention early.
• θ is a hard "th." You won't meet θ much in the low numbers, but it appears in εβδομήντα (seventy). It is the th in "thin," made with the tongue between the teeth and no voice.
• χ is a throaty "ch." The χ in οχτώ (eight) is like the ch in the Scottish "loch" or the German "Bach," a soft rasp from the back of the mouth, not the ch in "church."
• The stress mark tells you everything. Every Greek word of more than one syllable carries an accent mark over one vowel, and that mark shows exactly where the stress lands. In εφτά the stress is on the last syllable, ef-TA. In είκοσι it is on the first, EE-ko-see. Hit the marked syllable and your rhythm will sound right.
• ντ, μπ, and γκ are shortcuts for other sounds. The pair ντ often sounds like "nd" or a plain "d," which is why πέντε (five) comes out "PEN-de" and τριάντα (thirty) comes out "tree-AN-da." You'll see the same logic in words beyond numbers.

None of this needs to be perfect on day one. The point is to say the numbers out loud with roughly the right sounds and let accuracy grow with practice. Reading a pronunciation column silently teaches your eyes, not your mouth, so speak every row. If you want a deeper foundation in the letters behind these sounds, our guide to the Greek alphabet walks through all twenty four letters and how they behave.

The tens: 20 to 100

The tens are the next layer, and they are the words for twenty, thirty, forty, and so on up to one hundred. You have to learn these as their own vocabulary, because they are not simply the unit plus a suffix in a way you could guess. That said, there is a family resemblance running through them that makes them easier to hold onto once you see it.

Here is the pattern that ties them together. From thirty to ninety, the tens end in the sound "-nta," written -ντα. Say them in a row, τριάντα, σαράντα, πενήντα, εξήντα, εβδομήντα, ογδόντα, ενενήντα, and you can hear the shared ending drumming through all of them. That common tail is a real memory aid, because you only have to recall the front of each word and let the "-nta" fall into place.

You can also spot the units hiding inside several of the tens. τριάντα (thirty) carries the τρι of τρία (three). εξήντα (sixty) carries the εξ of έξι (six). εβδομήντα (seventy) relates to the older word for seven. These links are not perfectly clean, so do not force them, but where you notice one, use it. Twenty, είκοσι, stands apart with its own shape and its stress right at the front, so give it a little extra drill on its own.

Two words in this list deserve a slow, careful repetition out loud: εβδομήντα (seventy), with its cluster of consonants βδ near the start, and ενενήντα (ninety), which packs three similar syllables together. Beginners tend to rush these and blur them. Slow down, hit the stressed syllable, and they smooth out. One hundred, εκατό, is the odd one that does not end in "-nta," and it is worth flagging now because it changes shape slightly when you build bigger numbers, which the hundreds section covers.

Building compound numbers 21 to 99

This is where Greek rewards you, because forming the in-between numbers could not be simpler. You say the ten, then the unit, as two separate words, with nothing joining them. There is no "and," no hyphen, no change to either word. Twenty one is just twenty, then one.

Let's watch it work across a range of numbers so the pattern locks in. Notice that both parts keep the exact spelling and stress they had on their own.

Compare this to a language like French, where the numbers past sixty do strange arithmetic in your head, or German, which flips the order so you say the unit before the ten. Greek asks for none of that. It runs strictly from the larger part to the smaller part, in the same order you would write the digits, which is exactly what your eyes expect. If you can read the digits left to right, you can say the number.

There is one detail waiting in the wings. When the unit is one, three, or four, that final word can change its ending to match the gender of the noun you are counting. So twenty one apples and twenty one euros can end differently. That is a real feature of Greek and we will handle it properly in the gender section, but do not let it slow you down here. Learn the neuter forms in the tables first, since they are the default you reach for when counting in the abstract, and add the gender endings once the base pattern is automatic.

The hundreds

One hundred on its own is εκατό (ekató). The moment you build anything above it, though, the word shifts to εκατόν (ekatón) with an extra ν on the end, and then you add the rest of the number. So one hundred and one is εκατόν ένα, and one hundred fifty is εκατόν πενήντα. This little change only affects one hundred itself; the higher hundreds behave differently, as you'll see.

From two hundred up, each hundred has its own word, and here the transliterations below use the neuter form, which is your default. Watch how each one is built from the matching unit plus a shared "-kosia" ending.

The shared ending "-κόσια" runs through all of them from two hundred up, and the front of each word is the unit it comes from. τρια for three gives τριακόσια, three hundred. πεντα for five gives πεντακόσια, five hundred. Once you notice that, you are really only learning nine slightly modified units rather than nine unrelated words. As with seven and eight elsewhere, seven hundred and eight hundred have formal variants, επτακόσια and οκτακόσια, alongside the everyday εφτακόσια and οχτακόσια in the table.

Putting a full three-digit number together follows the same big-to-small order as everything else. You say the hundred, then the ten, then the unit, in that order, with the parts simply sitting next to each other. A couple of worked examples:

• 247 is διακόσια σαράντα εφτά (diakósia saránta eftá), literally two hundred, forty, seven.
• 538 is πεντακόσια τριάντα οχτώ (pentakósia triánta ochtó), five hundred, thirty, eight.
• 101 uses the special form εκατόν, giving εκατόν ένα (ekatón éna), one hundred and one.
• 999 is εννιακόσια ενενήντα εννιά (enniakósia enenínta enniá), and saying it smoothly is a genuine milestone.

The hundreds from two hundred up also change their endings for gender, exactly like the small numbers one, three, and four do. διακόσια is the neuter form; the masculine and feminine forms are διακόσιοι and διακόσιες. Again, learn the neuter first as your default, then layer the gender endings on top once the numbers themselves are solid.

Thousands, millions, and beyond

One thousand is χίλια (chília), pronounced roughly "HEE-lya," where the χ is that soft throaty sound and the whole word is short and quick. For a single thousand you use χίλια, so one thousand and five is χίλια πέντε and the year style numbers build from there.

The moment you have more than one thousand, the word changes to χιλιάδες (chiliádes, "hee-LYA-dhes"), which means "thousands," and you put the count in front of it. This is a small but important switch, so it gets its own table.

Notice a nice cognate hiding in the big words. εκατομμύριο, million, contains εκατό, hundred, and μύριο, an old word for ten thousand, so a million is quite literally a hundred ten-thousands. δισεκατομμύριο, billion, is that same million with a δισ prefix meaning twice or double stacked on the front. English speakers will also spot that εκατομμύριο and "million" are cousins from the same deep root, which makes it easy to remember.

Building a really long number just chains all the pieces you already know, largest to smallest. Take 2,347: that is δύο χιλιάδες τριακόσια σαράντα εφτά (dýo chiliádes triakósia saránta eftá), two thousands, three hundred, forty, seven. It reads exactly as the digits do, left to right, with each chunk in its expected slot. If you can read the figure, you can speak it, which is the quiet gift Greek gives you at every level of counting.

One more practical note about the thousand word: χίλια behaves like the hundreds, changing its ending for gender, and χιλιάδες stays put as the plural you place your count in front of. Years are usually said in this thousands style too, so being comfortable with χιλιάδες pays off constantly when you talk about dates.

Gender agreement: one, three, four, and the hundreds

Greek nouns come in three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, and a handful of numbers change their ending to agree with the noun they count. This sounds like a lot, but the list of numbers that actually do it is short, and everything else is invariable. Getting this section right is what separates a number you can recite from a number you can use in a real sentence.

Here is the good news stated plainly: only one, three, four, the hundreds from two hundred up, and the word for thousand change for gender. Every other number, including two, everything from five through ten, all the teens, and all the tens, never changes at all. So the whole topic comes down to a small, learnable set.

The number one

One has three forms, and you pick the one that matches the noun:

The neuter form, ένα, is the one you use when you count in the abstract, like reciting a phone number or doing sums, which is why it is the form we put in the main tables. Reach for ένας or μία only when there is an actual masculine or feminine noun attached.

Three and four

Three and four have just two forms each, one shared by masculine and feminine, and a separate neuter:

So three men is τρεις άντρες, three women is τρεις γυναίκες, but three children is τρία παιδιά. Four is the same story, with τέσσερις for masculine and feminine and τέσσερα for neuter. This matters inside compound numbers too, because the final word is what agrees. Twenty three euros, with euro being neuter, ends in the neuter τρία, while twenty three days, with day being feminine, would take the τρεις form. The rest of the compound never changes; only that last unit does.

The hundreds and thousand

As mentioned above, the hundreds from two hundred up and the word χίλια for thousand also inflect. For the hundreds, the neuter ends in -κόσια, the masculine in -κόσιοι, and the feminine in -κόσιες. So two hundred euros is διακόσια, two hundred men would use διακόσιοι, and two hundred women would use διακόσιες. χίλια follows the same three-way pattern with χίλιοι and χίλιες.

Ordinal numbers: first, second, third

Ordinals are the words for first, second, third, and so on, the ones you use for dates, floors, rankings, and putting things in order. In Greek, ordinals behave like ordinary adjectives, which means they take full masculine, feminine, and neuter endings just like any describing word. The masculine ends in -ος, the feminine in -η, and the neuter in -ο. To keep the table readable, it shows the masculine form, which is the standard citation form.

Because they are adjectives, ordinals agree with their noun. The first day is η πρώτη μέρα, using the feminine πρώτη because μέρα is feminine. The first floor is ο πρώτος όροφος, with the masculine πρώτος. The neuter appears in phrases like το πρώτο βήμα, the first step. You do not have to master every ending at once, but knowing that ordinals flex like adjectives explains why you will hear πρώτος, πρώτη, and πρώτο all meaning "first."

Higher ordinals continue predictably: eleventh is ενδέκατος (endékatos), twelfth is δωδέκατος (dodékatos), twentieth is εικοστός (ikostós), and hundredth is εκατοστός (ekatostós). You will meet the low ordinals constantly, since they name the months' days and building floors, so those first ten are the ones to drill until they are automatic. A friendly bonus for coffee lovers: a common Greek coffee is even named after an old ordinal idea, though for our purposes the practical win is being able to say which floor you want in a building or which day of the month it is.

Ancient Greek numerals vs modern words

People often ask whether Greek writes numbers with special symbols the way we picture ancient scrolls, and the honest answer has two parts. In everyday Modern Greek, you count and calculate with the same Arabic digits the rest of Europe uses, 1, 2, 3, and you say them with the spoken words this whole guide has taught. That is the system for shopping, time, prices, and phone numbers. It is what you actually need.

Alongside that, Greek has an older tradition of using the letters of the alphabet as numerals, and it is worth knowing because you will bump into it. In the ancient alphabetic system, each letter stood for a value: άλφα (alpha) was one, βήτα (beta) was two, γάμμα (gamma) was three, and so on through the alphabet, with separate letters for the tens and the hundreds. A small mark called a κεραία, written like an upward stroke after the letter, signaled that the letter was being used as a number rather than as a sound.

This system had a few special signs for values the plain twenty four letters could not cover. An old letter called stigma or digamma stood for six, a sign called koppa stood for ninety, and a sign called sampi stood for nine hundred. These are not letters you use to spell words today, so meeting them as numerals can be surprising the first time.

The key thing is what this system is for now. Modern Greek still uses these alphabetic numerals in roughly the way English uses Roman numerals: to number the chapters of a book, to count the volumes of a series, to mark the day in some formal contexts, and above all to number monarchs and popes. So a king written with the letters that spell a value is read aloud with the ordinary ordinal word. You would see the figure and simply say δεύτερος, "the second," out loud. In other words, the letters are a way of writing the number on the page, while the spoken language still uses the plain words.

There is also a strong practical reason not to overinvest in the old system. It was designed for a world of manuscripts, not for arithmetic on a keyboard, and Modern Greek life runs entirely on the digits everyone else uses. Learn to recognize the alphabetic numerals when they appear on a monument, a chapter heading, or a royal name, and spend the rest of your effort getting the spoken numbers fast and clear.

Pronunciation practice that sticks

Numbers are the perfect thing to practice out loud, because they come in a fixed order, they repeat forever in real life, and you always know if you got them right. The trouble is that most learners study numbers with their eyes, reading down a column and nodding along, and then freeze the first time a shopkeeper says a price at full speed. Reading and saying are different skills, and only saying builds the one you need. Here is how to close that gap.

• Count up and down every day. Run zero to twenty out loud, then twenty back to zero. Do the tens the same way. It takes ninety seconds and it wires the sequence into your mouth, not just your eyes.
• Say numbers you see anyway. Prices, house numbers, bus routes, the clock, page numbers. When a figure crosses your path, say it in Greek under your breath. You get dozens of free reps a day this way, tied to real context.
• Drill the hard sounds in isolation. The soft δ in δύο and δέκα, the throaty χ in οχτώ, and the consonant clusters in εβδομήντα and ενενήντα. Repeat the offending word ten times slowly, then at speed. Isolating the sound fixes it faster than repeating the whole list.
• Practice recognition, not just production. It is one thing to say "forty seven" and another to catch σαράντα εφτά when someone rattles it off. Have numbers said to you and write down the digits, so your ear learns to decode speed.
• Use numbers inside real phrases. Do not just count. Say "I want two coffees," "it is half past three," "the bill is fourteen euros." Numbers almost never appear alone in life, so practice them where they actually live, glued to nouns and gender endings.

That last point is the one that separates people who can recite numbers from people who can use them. In a real conversation the number arrives fast, wrapped in other words, attached to a noun that decides whether you need τρία or τρεις, and gone before you have finished translating. The only way to get comfortable with that is to hear and produce numbers inside live, unscripted speech, again and again, until decoding them stops feeling like work. If you want to sharpen the underlying sounds more broadly, our guide on how to improve your pronunciation gives you drills that apply directly to these Greek sounds.

This is exactly the kind of practice that is hard to arrange with a human. You cannot politely ask a friend to say random numbers at you for twenty minutes while you scramble to catch them, and a class moves at the pace of the slowest learner, not at yours. An AI speaking partner solves that neatly, because it will drill numbers with you as long as you like, at any speed, and never gets bored. It can quiz you, correct your pronunciation of that soft δ in the moment, and slot numbers into real sentences so you practice them the way they actually show up.

How SPAIKING helps you say them

Everything in this guide gets you to the point where you can read a Greek number and know what it means. The last step, the one that trips up most learners, is turning that knowledge into fast, confident speech that survives contact with a real conversation. That is the exact gap SPAIKING is built to close. It gives you an AI partner you talk to out loud, so the numbers you studied here become words you can actually produce under pressure.

Here is how it fits with what you have just learned. You drill zero to twenty and the tens from this page, then you open SPAIKING and have it quiz you out loud: it asks a price, you answer, it says a phone number, you read it back, it corrects the soft δ or the throaty χ the moment you slip. Because the AI responds in real time and mixes numbers into ordinary sentences, you get the two-way pressure a table can never give you, which is what finally moves a number from something you recognize to something you can say.

The parts that make it useful for numbers specifically:

• It drills at your pace, endlessly. Ask for fifty numbers in a row and it obliges, no boredom, no judgment, no waiting for a partner to be free.
• It corrects the sounds you cannot hear yourself getting wrong. Your own ear forgives your δ and χ. Live correction tells you the truth and points you at the fix.
• It puts numbers in context. Prices, times, dates, quantities with real nouns, so you practice the gender agreement on one, three, and four where it counts.
• It builds the recognition half too. It says numbers at natural speed so your ear learns to catch σαράντα εφτά without stalling.

Think of this guide as the map and SPAIKING as the practice ground. You learned the system here, from the units to the tens to the hundreds and the gender rules, and speaking is where it all becomes automatic. If you want to see how counting fits into a wider plan for getting to real conversation, our guide on how to learn a language fast puts vocabulary like this in its proper place alongside listening and speaking. When you are ready to start talking, the pricing page is where you turn these tables into conversation, and you can always start from the SPAIKING home page to see how it works.