The numbers from zero to twenty are the foundation of every larger number you will ever say in German, so it is worth getting them exactly right from the start. Most of them are pleasantly similar to English — neun and "nine", sechs and "six" come from the same Germanic roots — but a few hide irregularities (the teens are not built the way English builds them) and one of them, eins, changes its shape when it sits in front of a noun. This page gives you the full list, explains the patterns, and flags the traps that trip up English speakers.
Zero to ten
Here are the numbers 0–10. These are simply memorized — there is no internal logic to derive them from, just as there is none for "one, two, three" in English.
| Digit | German | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | null | also the word for "nil / zero score" |
| 1 | eins | becomes ein- before a noun (see below) |
| 2 | zwei | spoken zwo on the phone to avoid sounding like drei |
| 3 | drei | |
| 4 | vier | pronounced "feer", not "vire" |
| 5 | fünf | note the umlaut: ü |
| 6 | sechs | |
| 7 | sieben | two syllables |
| 8 | acht | |
| 9 | neun | |
| 10 | zehn | the building block of the teens |
Ich habe zwei Brüder und eine Schwester.
I have two brothers and one sister.
Wir treffen uns um sieben.
We're meeting at seven.
Das Spiel endete null zu null.
The game ended nil-nil (0–0).
eleven and twelve: elf and zwölf are not built from words
English stops being regular at "eleven" and "twelve" (which are not "oneteen" and "twoteen"), and German does exactly the same thing. Elf (11) and zwölf (12) are old, single, unanalyzable words — you cannot build them from eins or zwei. This is not laziness on German's part; eleven and twelve were the two numbers most used in trade and time-telling (a dozen, the clock), so they kept their ancient forms while the rest of the teens were regularized.
Mein Sohn wird im Juni elf.
My son turns eleven in June.
Es ist schon zwölf Uhr — Zeit fürs Mittagessen.
It's already twelve o'clock — time for lunch.
Thirteen to nineteen: unit + zehn
From 13 onward the teens become regular and transparent: take the unit, attach -zehn (ten), and write it as one word. This is the mirror image of English "-teen" (thir-teen, four-teen). Once you know the units, most teens build themselves: vier + zehn = vierzehn (14), acht + zehn = achtzehn (18).
| Digit | German | Built from |
|---|---|---|
| 13 | dreizehn | drei + zehn (regular) |
| 14 | vierzehn | vier + zehn (regular) |
| 15 | fünfzehn | fünf + zehn (regular, keep the umlaut) |
| 16 | sechzehn | sech + zehn — sechs loses its s |
| 17 | siebzehn | sieb + zehn — sieben loses its -en |
| 18 | achtzehn | acht + zehn (regular) |
| 19 | neunzehn | neun + zehn (regular) |
The two to watch are sechzehn and siebzehn. German drops a chunk of the unit before -zehn: sechs becomes sech- (no s) and sieben becomes sieb- (no -en). This happens for ease of pronunciation — sechszehn with its clustered "chs-z" is a mouthful, and siebenzehn is too long. This is the single most distinctive irregularity in the German number system, and crucially it recurs in the tens: 60 is sechzig and 70 is siebzig, with exactly the same letters dropped. Learning it now, with the teens, means you have already half-learned the tens.
Sie ist sechzehn und macht gerade ihren Führerschein.
She's sixteen and is currently getting her driver's license.
Der Bus kommt erst in siebzehn Minuten.
The bus doesn't come for another seventeen minutes.
Mit achtzehn darf man in Deutschland wählen.
At eighteen you're allowed to vote in Germany.
Twenty: zwanzig
Zwanzig (20) closes out this set and opens the door to the tens. It is the first of the -zig tens, and it is the platform on which 21–29 are built (where the famous units-before-tens reversal kicks in — see the next page).
Ich bin gerade zwanzig geworden.
I just turned twenty.
eins vs ein: the counting word changes before a noun
Here is the one piece of genuine grammar on this page. The number one has two faces in German:
- When you are counting or naming the bare number, it is eins: eins, zwei, drei ... or Hausnummer eins (house number one).
- When one stands directly in front of a noun, it behaves like the indefinite article ein and drops the -s, taking an ending to match the noun's gender and case: ein Buch (one book), eine Frau (one woman), einen Mann (one man, accusative).
This is not arbitrary: in German, "one book" and "a book" are literally the same word, ein Buch. The number "one" and the article "a/an" are the same morpheme — which is also true historically in English ("an" is just a worn-down "one"). So when one modifies a noun, it inflects like the article it really is.
Ich nehme eins.
I'll take one. (counting / no noun — keep the -s)
Ich nehme ein Stück Kuchen.
I'll take one piece of cake. (before a noun — drop the -s)
Wir haben nur einen Tag in Berlin.
We only have one day in Berlin. (accusative masculine — einen)
Es war einundzwanzig Uhr.
It was nine p.m. (21:00 — note eins drops its -s inside compound numbers: ein-, not eins-).
Common Mistakes
❌ einzehn / zweizehn
Incorrect — 11 and 12 are not built from words.
✅ elf / zwölf
Eleven and twelve are irregular single words, like in English.
❌ sechszehn / siebenzehn
Incorrect — these keep too many letters from the unit.
✅ sechzehn / siebzehn
16 and 17: sechs loses its s, sieben loses its -en.
❌ Ich nehme eins Buch.
Incorrect — eins cannot stand before a noun.
✅ Ich nehme ein Buch.
One book — before a noun, eins becomes the article-like ein.
❌ Wir haben nur ein Tag in Berlin. (as accusative object)
Incorrect — masculine accusative needs an ending.
✅ Wir haben nur einen Tag in Berlin.
We only have one day in Berlin — einen for masculine accusative.
❌ funf / zwolf (no umlaut)
Incorrect — dropping the umlaut changes the word and is a spelling error.
✅ fünf / zwölf
Five and twelve both carry an umlaut and must be written with it.
Key Takeaways
- 0–10 and 11–12 (elf, zwölf) are memorized; 13–19 are unit + -zehn.
- sechzehn drops the s of sechs; siebzehn drops the -en of sieben — and the same drop reappears in sechzig and siebzig.
- Write umlauts: fünf, zwölf, fünfzehn.
- Counting "one" is eins; "one + noun" is ein / eine / einen, the article-like form.
Now practice German
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Start learning German→Related Topics
- Cardinal Numbers 21-100 (Units before Tens)A1 — German names the units digit before the tens digit and joins them with und in a single word — einundzwanzig is 'one-and-twenty' — plus the irregular tens dreißig, sechzig, and siebzig.
- Hundreds, Thousands, MillionsA2 — Building large German numbers as single words up to a million, the reversed decimal comma and thousands dot (1.000,5), and the high-stakes false friend Milliarde = billion, Billion = trillion.
- Ordinal NumbersA2 — Forming German ordinals with -t (1-19) and -st (from 20), the irregulars erste, dritte, siebte and achte, why ordinals take adjective endings (am zweiten Mai), and the period-as-ordinal-marker (1. = erste).
- Pronouncing Numbers, Dates, and Spelling AloudA2 — Spoken German says the units before the tens (einundzwanzig = 'one-and-twenty'), uses zwo on the phone to avoid confusion with drei, and has its own spelling alphabet — the survival skills for phone numbers, prices, dates, and dictation.
- Numbers, ein, and viele as Adjective TriggersB2 — Why zwei gute Freunde and viele gute Ideen take strong endings while alle guten Freunde takes weak — uninflected quantifiers force the adjective to mark case, but alle/beide behave like der-words.