Numbers twenty-one to one hundred

Hindi numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine form a lexical system: each value has a conventional word, and there is no fully productive equivalent of English twenty + one. You must learn the forms, but they are not random noise. Repeated endings identify numerical neighborhoods, while beginnings often echo the final digit.

The cardinal is invariable. Gender, plural number, and oblique case appear on the following noun or adjective: इक्कीस लड़के, इक्कीस लड़कियाँ, इक्कीस लड़कों को. This page gives the full reference list and a practical strategy for decoding it.

The complete reference list

Alternative spellings occasionally reflect pronunciation or older conventions, but the table gives common standard forms. In particular, keep the dot in अड़तीस, सड़सठ, अड़सठ: ड़ represents /ṛ/, not plain ड.

Learn by neighborhoods, not by English addition

Many forms near 20 and 30 contain -ईस: इक्कीस, बाईस, तेईस, चौबीस, then तीस, इकतीस, बत्तीस. The forties often contain -तालीस, the fifties -वन/-पन, the sixties -सठ, the seventies -हत्तर, the eighties -आसी, and the nineties -ानवे. These are recognition cues, not detachable suffixes that can be freely attached.

The beginnings also recur with sound changes: इक-/इक्या- often signals 1, बा-/बया- 2, ति-/तिर- 3, चौ-/चव- 4, and छि-/छिया- 6. Compare इकसठ 61, इकहत्तर 71, इक्यासी 81, and इक्यानवे 91. There is enough family resemblance to support memory, but not enough regularity to predict every form safely.

The recurring उन- family points to “one before the next round ten”: उनतीस 29, उनतालीस 39, उनचास 49, उनसठ 59, and उनहत्तर 69. Later forms are less uniform: 79 is उन्नासी, 89 is नवासी, and 99 is निन्यानवे. The pattern helps until it does not; those exceptions require memorization.

Quantity, labels, and agreement

A quantity precedes what it counts: बत्तीस पन्ने, पचपन सीटें. A numbered label often follows the category noun or uses नंबर: कमरा ४९, बस नंबर ७२. English also distinguishes forty-nine rooms from room forty-nine, but learners often carry one order into the other.

In the first sentence, बहत्तर identifies one bus and does not make बस plural. In the second, it counts passengers, so the subject is plural and सकते हैं agrees accordingly.

Before a postposition, the counted noun—not the numeral—takes oblique plural morphology.

The exact number remains unchanged even though कर्मचारी → कर्मचारियों and तस्वीरें → तस्वीरों. Numerals never take the noun’s -ओं ending.

Prices, times, and dates

Numbers in transactions retain the same lexical forms. Currency and measurement conventions determine the surrounding grammar.

Hindi normally uses the cardinal सत्ताईस for a calendar date; writing 27th in English does not force the ordinal सत्ताईसवाँ. The ordinal is appropriate for ranking—“the twenty-seventh applicant”—and agrees like an adjective. See ordinal numbers.

For clock minutes, digital schedules may prompt a full reading: नौ बजकर पैंतालीस मिनट “nine forty-five,” literally “nine having struck and forty-five minutes.” Everyday speech also uses conventional fractions, which are covered with time expressions elsewhere.

Digits and the road to larger numbers

Both ३७ and 37 are सैंतीस. There is no comma inside a two-digit number. At 100, Hindi uses सौ: एक सौ and plain सौ both mean one hundred. Larger values combine lexical two-digit forms with units, as in एक सौ सैंतीस 137. The hundreds, thousands, lakh, and crore page explains that composition.

The words in this page are therefore the reusable final blocks of larger numbers. If you know छप्पन, you can recognize it unchanged at the end of दो सौ छप्पन “256” and एक हज़ार छप्पन “1,056.”

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

Treat 21–99 as a lexical system: memorize each complete word, but use repeated neighborhood shapes to organize memory. उन- often signals one below a round ten, while endings such as -तालीस, -सठ, -हत्तर, -आसी, and -ानवे help identify the range. Cardinals never agree; counted nouns show plural and oblique case. Quantity order differs from label order, and ordinary dates use cardinal forms rather than automatic English-style ordinals.