Key takeaways
- Marathi numbers below 100 are close to a hundred separate vocabulary items rather than a generative system, so counting drills produce recognition without recall.
- The decade words — vīs, tīs, cāḷīs, pannās, sāṭh, sattar, ainśī, navvad — are not derived from the units and must simply be learned.
- Unit forms change shape inside compounds: dōn is two but twenty-two is bāvīs, and sahā is six but twenty-six is savvīs.
- Numbers ending in nine are usually built by subtracting from the next ten, so 29 is ēkōṇatīs, literally one-less-than-thirty.
- Large numbers use the lakh and crore system rather than grouping in thousands, which changes how you read prices and population figures.
Twenty-nine in Marathi is एकोणतीस (ēkōṇatīs), which does not contain the word for nine and does not contain the word for twenty. It is built from thirty, with a prefix meaning "one less than". Twenty-two is बावीस (bāvīs), which does not contain दोन (dōn), the ordinary word for two.
This is the thing nobody mentions when they hand you a counting chart. Marathi numbers below a hundred are not a system you derive; they are, for practical purposes, close to a hundred separate words. Treating them as a system is exactly why learners can recite to twenty and still freeze at a vegetable stall.
One to ten, where everything is still simple
| Digit | Marathi | Romanised |
|---|---|---|
| १ | एक | ēk |
| २ | दोन | dōn |
| ३ | तीन | tīn |
| ४ | चार | cār |
| ५ | पाच | pāc |
| ६ | सहा | sahā |
| ७ | सात | sāt |
| ८ | आठ | āṭh |
| ९ | नऊ | na'ū |
| १० | दहा | dahā |
Ten items, no tricks, and worth learning properly because every later number that does behave predictably is built from these.
Learn the Devanagari digits alongside them. They still appear on signage and in printed Marathi, they cost about twenty minutes, and they make the rest of the script feel less foreign — the Marathi alphabet guide covers where they sit in the writing system.
Eleven to twenty, where it stops being derivable
अकरा (akarā), बारा (bārā), तेरा (tērā), चौदा (caudā), पंधरा (pandharā), सोळा (sōḷā), सतरा (satarā), अठरा (aṭharā), एकोणीस (ēkōṇīs), वीस (vīs).
Look for ēk in akarā and you will half-convince yourself it is there. Look for dōn in bārā and you will not. These are fused forms whose seams have worn away over centuries of frequent use, the same erosion that gave English eleven and twelve instead of oneteen and twoteen.
Nineteen is the interesting one. एकोणीस is one less than twenty, and it is the first appearance of a pattern that keeps paying out.
The decades, which you simply have to learn
| 20 | वीस | vīs |
|---|---|---|
| 30 | तीस | tīs |
| 40 | चाळीस | cāḷīs |
| 50 | पन्नास | pannās |
| 60 | साठ | sāṭh |
| 70 | सत्तर | sattar |
| 80 | ऐंशी | ainśī |
| 90 | नव्वद | navvad |
| 100 | शंभर | śambhar |
None of these is transparently tīn plus something, or cār plus something. There is no rule. There are eight words, and knowing them is the load-bearing part of counting in Marathi. Everything in the gaps hangs off them.
Inside a decade, the unit changes shape
The twenties illustrate the whole problem:
एकवीस (ēkavīs) 21, बावीस (bāvīs) 22, तेवीस (tēvīs) 23, चोवीस (cōvīs) 24, पंचवीस (pañcavīs) 25, सव्वीस (savvīs) 26, सत्तावीस (sattāvīs) 27, अठ्ठावीस (aṭhṭhāvīs) 28, एकोणतीस (ēkōṇatīs) 29.
Three things are happening at once. The unit comes first, which is the opposite of English. The unit is not the citation form — two is dōn but shows up as bā-, six is sahā but shows up as sav-. And the last one is not a twenty at all; it has jumped to the next decade.
That is the shape of every decade in the language. The prefixes are similar from decade to decade but not identical, and the joins produce doubled consonants and vowel changes that vary.
The one rule that genuinely helps
Numbers ending in nine are built by subtraction. The ēkōṇ- prefix means "one less than", and it attaches to the decade above: 19 is ēkōṇīs (one less than twenty), 29 is ēkōṇatīs (one less than thirty), 39 is ēkōṇacāḷīs, and so on.
Nine of the hundred, handled by one idea. Take it.
Above a hundred, the grouping changes
Marathi uses the Indian numbering system: हजार (hajār) for a thousand, लक्ष (lakṣa) for a lakh — one hundred thousand — and crore for ten million. Ten thousand is दहा हजार (dahā hajār), ten lakh is दहा लक्ष.
For anyone reading prices, salaries or population figures, this is more immediately useful than the back half of the hundred. A number written 12,34,567 groups after the first three digits from the right and then in pairs, and is read out in lakhs and thousands rather than in millions.
How we teach this, and what changed
The numbers unit in Learn Marathi Language Fast originally did what most courses do: one lesson, one to a hundred, presented as a list with audio.
It did not work, and the failure was specific rather than general. Learners finished the lesson and could recognise numbers when they saw them. Asked to produce one — in a price roleplay, in a dictation exercise — they could reliably get to about twenty and then reached for English.
The diagnosis is straightforward in hindsight. A hundred items in one session is a hundred items in one session, whatever the subject matter, and a chart that looks systematic invites you to study the pattern instead of the words. There is not enough pattern there to carry you.
So the unit is now blocks of ten, each with its own drills and its own mistake review, and the decade words are pulled out and taught as a set of their own before any of the gaps are filled in. Ordering matters here: knowing cāḷīs means every number in the forties has somewhere to attach.
The honest limitation is that this makes the numbers material longer in calendar time. There is no version of learning Marathi numbers that is quick. What the block structure buys is that stopping partway leaves you with something complete — all of the twenties, say — rather than a thin film over the whole range.
Practise them in prices and quantities rather than in sequence, because sequence recall and random recall are different skills and only one of them is useful in a shop. Marathi phrases worth learning first has the shopping and market lines the numbers slot into, and the broader plan is in the Marathi beginner's route. Other courses in the catalogue are listed under language learning.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Why are Marathi numbers so irregular?
What is 29 in Marathi?
Do I need the Devanagari digits as well as the words?
What are lakh and crore?
Sources
- Numbers in Marathi (opens in a new tab)Omniglot — accessed
- Marathi language (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
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