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Better German Podcast with Susi

Susanne Schilk-Blümel
Since 09/2023 43 episodes

Episode 43 - German Numbers Made Easy

2025-09-05 36 min

Description & Show Notes

In episode 43 of the Better German Podcast, host Susi Blumel breaks down everything you need to know about German numbers. She guides listeners through counting from 1 to 100, explains the difference between “eins” and “ein,” and introduces patterns for numbers above 20. She also highlights handy resources available for download in the Better German community and previews upcoming episodes on adjectives, ordinal numbers, and dates. This episode is perfect for beginners or anyone wanting to brush up on their German number skills.

Hello! And welcome back to another episode of the Better German Podcast! In this episode, Episode 43, Susi Blumel breaks down everything you need to know about German numbers. From 1 to 100, you'll learn the patterns that make counting simple, the difference between one and one , and how to use numbers to talk about your age, the time, and even your phone number. You'll also hear where to grab a free PDF full of exercises inside the Better German community , the perfect place to keep practicing with support. If numbers have ever tripped you up, this episode will help you feel more confident using them naturally.

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📚 Summary
Numbers are everywhere — from catching the right train at 7:45 to saying your age. In this refreshing episode of the Better German podcast, Susi Blumel makes German numbers simple and practical. Instead of just memorizing lists, you'll practice patterns that carry you all the way to 100 and see how to put them into action when talking about time, age, or phone numbers. You'll also hear how to keep learning with free resources in the Better German Community — plus a sneak peek at the next topics coming up!

👋Introduction
Welcome to another episode of the Better German Podcast! In today's episode, host Susi Blumel—an experienced German teacher—dives into all things numbers in German. Whether you're just getting started or looking for a refresher, this episode covers how to count from 1 to 100, say your age, tell the time, and even share your phone number in German. Susi shares practical tips, clear explanations, and encourages you to practice right along with her. Plus, she mentions helpful resources like downloadable PDFs and the Better German community, where you can find more learning materials and connect with fellow German learners. Get ready for a fun, practical session that will kick your German number skills up a notch!

🔑 Key Topics Covered
Counting in German
▫️ Numbers 1–100 with clear patterns (eins vs. ein, teens, twenties, thirties and beyond)
▫️ Special tips for tricky cases like sechzehn and siebzehn
Numbers in Action
▫️ Say your age (Wie alt bist du? Ich bin … Jahre alt.)
▫️ Tell the time: Es ist ein Uhr, halb eins (12:30), noon, midnight, AM/PM phrases
▫️ Share phone numbers clearly, digit by digit
Extra Number Know-How
▫️ Zero (null), negatives (minus), and decimals (20,5)
Practice & Next Steps
▫️ Repeat after Susi and try examples yourself
▫️ Use the free PDF for extra practice
▫️ Join the Better German Community for live lessons and support
▫️ Coming up: adjectives, ordinal numbers, and dates

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Other Resources📚
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  • Listen to All The Episodes Published So Far!

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Transcript

So when we say 21 in German, we say one and 20. So " einundzwanzig which is literally 1 and 20. "einundzwantzig" and unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, this is not just for this particular number, but this is for all the numbers. So that's just the way it is. You'll have to get used to it. Honestly, I was never thinking about that being odd until my students asked me about it the first time, like, 20 years ago. Welcome to the Better German podcast. I am Susi Blümel, a German teacher and founder of Better German. This podcast helps to learn German in a simple and clear way. With useful words, clear sentence structures, pronunciation, and real life topics from daily life and culture. You'll also get tips for learning German and understanding how the language actually works. And when you're ready, we have a free community and courses to support you even more. All right. welcome to a new episode of the Better German podcast. My name is Susi. I'm a German teacher and I want to help you learn German with without unnecessary complications that have actually been added to learning German, not just to German, but anyway, this is about German. So, here we are. This is an episode about numbers. So in this episode I'm going to teach you how to say the numbers from one to 100, but also how to say your age, how to say the time. We're going to cover a little bit because actually saying time, deserves its own episode. But we are going to go into it a little bit and I'm going to tell you an example of how you can say a phone number. So that's actually quite a packed episode. But anyway, that's the numbers. That's the plan. So let's get right into it. Before I get right into it, there is going to be a PDF that you can download that is going to help you with those numbers. I'm going to write out the numbers. In there. and maybe add a little bit of practicing. So how you can do that. As always, you can find any podcast downloads within the better German community and the better German community you can find on my homepage better german.info/community and it is kind of a hub for all the materials around the podcast, but it's much more. So it's definitely, worth joining it even if you're just interested for a podcast freebies. But it's more and you can ask questions there. You have a community of other people that are interested in learning German. I'm having free lessons in there. You can contact me, you can write to me anytime and ask me questions. I will make sure that any questions you could have are being answered. Sometimes the questions are very general, like, "okay, I want to learn German." But I mean also questions about specific things, like questions about grammar and so on. So you could ask all of them in there. Okay, so let's get into it. So numbers. Actually I think without a lot of further ado, I'm just going to start with the numbers, 1 to 12. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to say the English number and then I am going to say the German number. The best way of doing this on the podcast is you're going to repeat everything. You just repeat the English and the German. That kind of helps, because you hear yourself saying it at the same time, and let's do that. So number "one," "eins" So "eins" in German is really the number because if we say, "a," this is "ein" So in German, there is just very, very little difference between "one" and "a." "Eins" is the number when you count, and if you say one of something, you say "ein." So if I count, I say "eins, zwei, drei, vier," and so on. We're going to go into that in a second. And if I say "ein Buch" as like, "one book." " "Es ist ein Buch." So in German there is no difference between "a book" and "one book." That's both "ein Buch" Okay, let's carry on with the numbers. "Two," " zwei " "Three." "drei" "Four" " vier," " Five." " fünf" Really try saying "fünf." This "ooh" sound is a little bit unusual if your native language is English, but you'll get used to it. Don't worry. It's, "Ooh," " fünf" Six is "sechs." Yeah, it's really like that. Seven " sieben" Eight. " acht" Nine, " neun" Ten, "zehn" So you spell it Z or ZEHN, and this Z is really like "ts." It's like if you had a T and then S afterwards, and you have to hear that " ts" " Zehn." I'm going to do 11 and 12 in addition, I'm going to tell you in a second why. So, "Eleven" "elf" "Twelve" " zwölf good. Let's repeat that one more time. I'm just going say the German now. If it's hard for you to follow, then just write up the numbers and then you can follow "eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht neun zehn elf zwölf" If you are a total beginner, just keep repeating it. Don't worry too much about the pronunciation. However. for example, if you're in one of my courses, which you can find on better German info slash courses, we go into pronunciation aspects of course. So you will learn how to say every single letter and combination of letters. But, mostly what you need is to repeat things. So just say the things and say them some more time. Good. So now we come to the numbers 13 to 19 actually. It's actually in this case, not much different than it is in English, so let's get into it. " Thirteen" " dreizehn" " Fourteen" " vierzehn" "Fifteen" " fünfzehn" "Sixteen" "sechzehn" Always make sure that you really say this "zehn" relatively clearly This is important because if you don't say them clearly, it could be mixed up with something else that you will learn later. "Seventeen" " siebzehn " " Eighteen" "achtzehn" " Nineteen" " neunzehn" "Twenty" "zwanzig" Okay, good. So I'm going to do these 13 to 20 one more time without the translation. So the German "dreizehn bis", meaning "to" or "until" " zwanzig" Starting with 13, " dreizehn" And you should say them after me. " dreizehn," "vierzehn," "fünfzehn," "sechzehn," "siebzehn," "achtzehn" "neunzehn" " zwanzig So far so good. So I suggest to you that you just listen to this part a couple of more times and repeat it after me, and then that should be fairly simple. Next ones are 21 to 29, or actually let's just do the 20. 20 to 29. And now we're introducing a pattern that is the same all through the numbers and there is something that is a little bit unusual about those numbers, even though in English, you, do it up until 22, you say 13, so you kind of say the three before the 10, but further up you say 21, which kind of is logical because it follows the direction in which you read the number. However, in German, unfortunately, please don't be upset with me. I'm sorry I didn't invent it, but we say it the other way round. So when we say 21 in German, we say one and 20. So " einundzwanzig which is literally 1 and 20. "einundzwantzig" and unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, this is not just for this particular number, but this is for all the numbers. So that's just the way it is. You'll have to get used to it. Honestly, I was never thinking about that being odd until my students asked me about it the first time, like, 20 years ago. Because that's just the way how we learn it at school and then that's just what it is and we're used to it. I realize however, that I think we're like one of very, very few languages that do it like that. There is a few others though. So I'll say the English numbers as we've had it before, and the German ones, and you repeat it. 21 "einundzwanzig," 22 "zweiundzwanzig," 23. "dreiundzwanzig" 24 25 "fünfundzwanzig," 26 " sechsundzwanzig" 27 " siebenundzwanzig" 28. " achtundzwanzig" 29 "neunundzwanzig" And that's pretty much mostly what you need to know, and you can almost say the numbers from 1 to 100. Okay. Good. So, because this is a podcast, and I don't want to make this like a seven hour thing or even one hour thing, I'm just going to add the numbers like 30, 40, 50, and a little bit. So you'll be able to say the pattern. I'll say it in English, you repeat it and I'll say it in German and you also repeat it. So 30 dreißig, 31 "einunddreysig" 32 " zweiunddresig" and so on. So it's the same thing. I'll count from 31 to 39. " einunddDreysig" "zweiunddreißig" "dreiunddreißig" "vierunddreißig" "fünfunddreißig" "sechsunddreißig" "siebenunddreißig," "achtunddreißig," "neununddreißig" And might as well add, "vierzig" that's 40. So I hope you like what you hear. I wanted to mention this, so the best way to learn German with me is through my life group courses. You get real teaching, you get life support, and you get a clear path to really learn German and use the language. We also offer self-paced courses and the free community with resources and practice. All of that you find on bettergerman.info. Good. So now I'm going to add the numbers. The remaining 10 numbers like, 40, "vierzig" 50, " fünfzig" 60. "sechzig" 70 "siebzig." 80 " achtzig" 90, "neunzig" 100 "ein hundert" And just as in English, we can say it with or without one. So we can say "100" or hundred. So in German we can also say, "ein hundert" "Hundert " All right. So to make this a little bit more complete, I'm going to tell you what zero is, is "Null" and if you want to have minus numbers, you say "Minus" And then maybe one other thing that could be interesting here in English, when you say a number like 20.5, we actually in German for this point, so point in a mathematical sense, we say comma, and yes, that sounds very similar to the comma, like to what we make when we separate two parts of a sentence. And that in Germany is also a comma. Actually we use the same symbol for a number, so an American number, when I say 50.1 is literally a 50 and then a point, a dot, a period, and then one, and in German you would write the same thing. 50, and then a comma, and then one. All right, so that's that. Let's do something a little bit practical. So what could we do? What could we say with the number? So the first thing we could say with a number, obviously, I mean not obviously, but would be an age. So if you want to know what somebody's age is, you can say, "How old are you? "Wie alt bist du." Or you could say, "What is your age?" "Was ist dein Alter" And then you would say something like, "I am 23 years old." Spoiler. I'm not 23 years old, but anyway, that would be, " Ich bin dreiundzwanzig Jahre alt." So I want you to pause for a second and try figuring out your age This is of course easier if you downloaded the PDF. So if you haven't downloaded it, I invite you to do it. You can find it in the better German community, which is free to sign up. It's better German info slash community. And in there you find it on the resources, there's a tab that's called resources. It's when you're on the computer, it's on the left side in the community. If you download or if you have the app, then it's on the bottom and there is a tab called resources. And in that tab, resources, you find a lot of cool resources. I'm adding stuff to this regularly. You can even find replays of entire lessons in there. So in this tab, actually, the first group of resources is podcast resources. So you can just go there and then you find a document with the resources, with links actually, downloads and the PDFs are right there. So if you go in there, you don't have to sign up again and you can find all of the resources. So anyway, I am going to make a few examples of what somebody's age could be. So I'll want you to repeat after me. I'm going to say, "How old are you?" and then I'm going to say different ages. Okay. So, "How old are you?" " Wie alt bist du?" "I am 17. " ich bin siebzehn " Or, "How old are you?" " Wie alt bist du?" " Ich bin sechsundzwanzig " "I am 26." As in English, you can or cannot add, " years old." So you could say, " Ich bin sechsundzwanzig Jahre alt " but you don't have to say the years old. Let's do one more example without translation, "Wie alt bist du" " Ich bin zweiundvierzig Jahre alt " So that would be 42 years old. Okay, so I invite you to practice this a little longer, a little more with your sheet or with the numbers that you wrote down. So one other thing, I said I'm going to touch on time. Actually, I'm really going to touch it because regionally saying the time has a few oddities and I'm going to go into that in a separate episode. I have a big schedule of episodes, okay. I'm by the way, working on expanding the frequency very fast. So I'm actually in the process of hiring another assistant. I have a beautiful assistant, her name is Samantha, and she's helping me with a lot of things. But one of the things she's helping me, is editing these podcast episodes and doing like the reels for them and stuff like that. And actually I am in the process of hiring two more assistants because I want to get more content, more podcast episodes, and more blog articles out to you, and at the same time continue working on the courses. So I'm working on having a complete, like all of the materials that I need for all of the courses that I have in mind. There's going to be 14 German levels and I've been working on curriculum and materials and books, in order to do that. So in order to continue to get things out, I'm actually in the process of hiring two more assistants, but I have the podcast episodes scheduled out, up until Episode 132. So this episode is Episode 43. I have the next episode scheduled out. Now we are back at the frequency of having two episodes a month, and I'm working to have one episode a week, so four episodes a month, minimum, quite soon. I don't know how fast, we manage to do that, but we're working on it for, for sure. Anyway, so there is going to be an episode, which is 114. So I don't know how fast this is going to come up, but it will be, depending on when you listen to it, maybe you're lucky and it's already out. Maybe you find this episode when we're already at the episode 150, and then you just have to go back to 114 because this is going to be talking about daily routine and we will have to include saying a little bit more about saying time in there as well. I'm going to give you the very basic things on how to say. So the first thing is, if you say it's hmmm o'clock, like the full hour, you say, if it's "One o'clock," "Es ist ein Uhr." If you say "At one o'clock," you say, "Um ein Uhr." And we can say the 24 hours. So you could say, "ein Uhr," and that could be one o'clock in the morning, like meaning one o'clock at night, " ein Uhr," but it could also be one o'clock in the afternoon, "ein Uhr." Good. ein Uhr" "one o'clock." "Two o'clock," " zwei Uhr" "Three o'clock," " drei Uhr "Four o'clock." " vier Uhr " So I hope you're not bored, but my assumption is if you are a complete newcomer, then this is great practice. If you already know the numbers, you're not going to listen to this anyway, or at least skip until further behind. So, " Five o'clock," " fünf Uhr" "Six o'clock," "sechs Uhr" "Seven o'clock," " sieben Uhr" "Eight o'clock," " acht Uhr " "Nine o'clock," " neun Uhr " "Ten o'clock." " zehn Uhr " "Eleven o'clock." " elf Uhr " "Twelve o'clock." "zwölf Uhr" Okay. Let's do a few more things about time. Noon is " Mittag" At noon would be " zu Mittag " So, I guess it's similar as it's in wherever exactly you're from or maybe not. Let me know. When my grandmother used to say, "Come on Sunday at noon," we were expected to be there, at 12 o'clock sharp because the food was on the table, served " zu Mittag." So, for her, "Zu Mittag" meant like "12 o'clock sharp." I think for most people now, "Mittag" is a little bit of a more a time zone or area and not so much a particular like 12 sharp anyway, " Mittag" And then we have midnight, which is, " Mittanacht " And then let's do very fast, a few more things about time. So there is one thing that is actually a little odd. It rattled me, because in German, when we say half hour, we say "halp eins" means actually "half past 12," so it's half one. I actually heard regionally, this also in English, but I know that it's not the same everywhere. So 1230, half past 12 in Germany it's "halp eins." So it's kind of like half of the first hour. It's not illogical, it's just something you have to get used to. "Halp eins." So 130 is "Halp zwei" And then the only other thing I'm going to tell is for you to say the time in a very precise but simple way, you can always say for example, if you want to say. 3:45, it's 3:45, you would say, "drei Uhr fünfund vierzig " So you say the hour and then you say, "Uhr" and then 45. It would be like, " three o'clock 45" So, "drei Uhr fünfundvierzig." Usually at AM or PM, we add the it's morning or evening if necessary. So if I ask you, " Hey, do you want to go to the cinema tomorrow?" And you say, "Yeah, sure!" " Willst du morgen mit mir ins Kino gehen?" That's, "Do you want to go to the cinema with me tomorrow?" And you say, "Ja natürlich" "Yes, of course." Or the "Yes, for sure." Then I say, "Okay, what time?" "Um, wie viel Uhr?" That would be, "What time?" "Um, wie viel Uhr." We have to say this, "Um." " Um," means "at," in this case, "At what time?" " Um wie viel Uhr." And then you say, "Hmm. Why don't we do eight o'clock?" " Wie wies"- "What about" "Wie wies mit acht Uhr?" So you would say AM or PM because it's kind of understood. But if you want to add PM we do not use the same way. We would say eight o'clock in the evening. " acht Uhr am abend " Or if something is in the morning, if, you want to meet with me at eight o'clock in the morning, I may not say that I want to meet you, but if you want, you would say " acht uhr in der früh" That's "eight o'clock in the morning." "acht Uhr in der früh" or "acht Uhr früh" "Früh" means morning or early. So, "acht Uhr früh " Okay, let's do a few more of the number thing. So 6:20 in the morning is "Sechs Uhr zwanzig" " Sechs Uhr zwanzig in der Früh" Yeah, "Sechs Uhr zwanzig in der  früh" Oder einfach "sechs Uhr zwanzig" 11:45 "elf Uhr fünfundvierzig" "sechs Uhr abends," Meaning, "six o'clock in the evening." Alright, so we did time. Okay, good. The last thing I have on my list that I want to cover today is how to say a phone number, and that's actually fairly easy. You can't just say one figure after the other, so let's do an imaginative phone number. If you would call somebody in Austria, today, if you say mobile phone numbers and you want to be sure that everything is included, you start with plus "Plus" and then the, country code for Austria is "four three," we say "Plus vier dre" And then you would have, a code. Let's say you call a Viennese number, then you would say, "eins" We just have this number, one, that's the area code for Vienna, because it's the biggest city in Austria. So that's why we just have one. So it's "4, 3, 1," and then you have actually seven numbers. So the easiest way of saying it would just be saying the numbers. It never starts with one. Let's say a fictitious number. I don't know who it is. I hope this person doesn't get a lot of calls. So it's, 4 3, 1, 6, 6, 4, 8, 8, 7, 1. So that would be in German , "Plus vier, drei, eins, sechs, sechs, vier, acht, acht, sieben, eins" So, "plus vier, drei, eins, sechs, sechs, vier, acht, acht, sieben, eins" So that is an example. The German country code would be, "Plus vier neun" -"Plus four nine." And I'm very sorry, but I don't remember the Swiss country code. So that's phone numbers. Of course, sometimes people will group points. So this "sechs, sechs vier acht, acht, sieben, eins" could be like "plus four, three" could be, "Plus. dreiundvierzig" that would be "43," " dreiundvierzig eins " probably "sechs, sechs, vier achtundachtzig einundsiebzig" -"88 71. " So there is no universal rule here, how you could group those. That's why I suggest that you, practice the numbers. In my experience, people who actually live in Austria or even have spent some time in Austria or in any German speaking country, the numbers is something they learn fairly fast because you know of the supermarkets and everything. Anyway, so that was numbers. I hope you enjoyed this episode. As I said before, I'm working to get you more episodes fast, because I actually enjoy doing them and I hope you enjoy listening to them. If you do, then definitely subscribe and. I do suggest you to sign up to the better German community so you can get more out of it. You can also ask questions in there and I would love to hear from you. I would love to, so if you actually sign up to the community because you listen to the podcast, then let me know when you introduce yourself in the community because it would be really interesting for me to learn. So let's end up with a quick outlook for the next episodes. So, first of all, the next episode is actually going to be about adjectives. So words that describe like big, small, old, new and so on. That's going to be episode number 44. And then episode number 73 is ordinal numbers and dates. So, saying the first, "der erste" and so on. So that's going to be episode 73. I can't say exact dates, but I can tell you numbers. And another thing I can tell you, you always find the show notes for the podcast. I mean, you can also look, wherever you are listening to the episodes, there's usually, show notes and you can find, details there and any links that I mention and so on. But you can also always go to better German dot info. That's my homepage, where you also find anything you could be looking for and better German info slash and then the number of the podcast episode. So this one is 43, so better German info slash 43. where you find all the informations about this episode and anything I mention in this one. And, once the episode 73 is going to be live, it's going to be better german.info/ 73. All right, so I'm really at the end now. I hope you enjoyed it and I'll hear you in the next episode. Ciao Ciao!.

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