Numbers, time and dates in German

einundzwanzig: the units come first

From 21 to 99 German says the units before the tens and joins them with und, all in one word: einundzwanzig is one-and-twenty, siebenundvierzig seven-and-forty. English once did the same — the four and twenty blackbirds of the nursery rhyme — so the idea is not foreign. What makes it hard is speed: you hear the second digit first and have to hold it until the first one arrives, which is exactly when a phone number or a price goes wrong.

ein Uhr, but eins on its own

Counting, you say eins. As soon as a noun follows, the -s goes: ein Uhr, ein Euro, and inside a number too — einundzwanzig, einhundert. Where nothing follows, it comes back: hunderteins, Es ist eins., halb eins.

zwanzig Euro, not Euros

After a figure, Euro and Cent stay in the singular, and so do most units of measure: drei Kilo, zehn Prozent, zwei Glas Wein. The plural Euros does exist, but not after a number — on a price it is always Euro.

halb vier is half past three

English counts the half hour away from the hour just gone; German counts it towards the hour to come, so halb vier means half-way to four. Both languages use the same word for half, which is why this is the one trap on the page that costs appointments rather than merely sounding odd. When it matters, ask for the twenty-four-hour form: fünfzehn Uhr dreißig cannot be misread.

der 3. Mai: the full stop makes the ordinal

German has no -st, -nd or -rd to write after a figure; a full stop does that job. der 3. Mai is read der dritte Mai, with no word for ‘of’ between the day and the month. The same stop turns up after the names of kings: Friedrich II. is Friedrich der Zweite.

am dritten Mai, not auf

Days and dates take am, short for an dem, where English says ‘on’ — am Montag, am dritten Mai — and after am the ordinal ends in -en. Months take im: im Mai. And a year on its own takes nothing at all.

1.250,50: comma and full stop change places

German marks decimals with a comma and groups thousands with a full stop or a thin space — exactly the other way round from English. It is said that way too: 3,5 is drei Komma fünf, and the digits after the comma are read one at a time, drei Komma eins vier. Prices are the exception: 4,50 € is vier Euro fünfzig, with no comma in sight.

a billion is eine Milliarde

German kept the long scale. After Million comes Milliarde, a thousand million, and only then Billion, which is a million million — an English trillion. A German headline about eine Billion Euro is a thousand times larger than the English word suggests. Britain used the long scale officially until the 1970s, so older British texts can mislead in the same way.

neunzehnhundertvierundachtzig, with the hundert

German splits a year from 1100 to 1999 in two, as English does, but it says the hundert that English leaves out — and a year written out in words is one word. From 2000 on a year is an ordinary number: zweitausendvierundzwanzig. You may hear zwanzig vierundzwanzig, copied from English, but it is not the standard form.

no in before a year

A bare year needs no preposition in German. If you want one, it is im Jahr 1984. in 1984 is lifted straight from English; it turns up in business German, but most readers still take it for a mistake.

fünf nach halb vier is 3.35

Close to the half hour German counts from halb rather than from the full hour: fünf vor halb vier is 3.25 and fünf nach halb vier is 3.35. Once halb vier has settled as 3.30 this follows — but it is two steps in your head, and in a conversation you hear the time once.

Berlin, den 23. Juli: the date in the accusative

The traditional letter heading puts the date in the accusative, the case German uses for a point in time without a preposition, as in jeden Tag or nächsten Montag. In Heute ist der 23. Juli the date is the subject, so it stays in the nominative. Many letters today leave the article out altogether: Berlin, 23. Juli 2024.

der zweitgrößte, in one word

Before a superlative the ordinal drops its ending and joins the adjective: die zweitgrößte Stadt, der drittbeste Platz, das zweitälteste Kind. Written as two words it is not a different meaning, just wrong — and it is the kind of slip that survives into otherwise fluent writing.