In today's episode we dive straight into numbers and its basic applications in day to day conversations in Mandarin Chinese. Counting in Chinese is simple, straightforward and logical.

If you are a beginner, imagine your vocabulary is the brand new bank account that you just opened. Numbers are the first big deposit you can add to it. Once you learn how to say 1 to 10, you can count to 99.

We will also go into how numbers can immediately help expand your vocabulary in telling date and time. For instance, with number 1-12, you add "月"yuè" (month) to form the 12 months of the year, or "点 diǎn" (o'clock) to form the 12 hours of the day.

Once you get familiar with the numbers, they are also great at helping you practise tonal pronunciation, without the pressure of drawing something from your memory or the demand of sentence formation.