Hebrew Numbers And Counting: Cardinal And Ordinal

Hebrew numbers are explained and outlined below.

In this guide, you’ll find convenient tables of Hebrew numerals, cardinal and ordinal numbers.

These are essential for most Hebrew language interactions, particularly if you’re buying, counting or describing something.

Hebrew numerals

Hebrew traditionally used what’s called an alphabetic numeral system to write numerals.

This quite simply meant that numerals were written using letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

In Modern Hebrew however, the Hindu-Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3… etc.) are used for most things, but in some contexts you may still see the alphabetic numerals being used.

See the following table for traditional Hebrew numerals:

Hebrew cardinal numbers

As mentioned above, Hebrew cardinal numbers are typically written using Hindu-Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3… etc.) in Modern Hebrew.

The other alternative to writing these numbers is to write the Hebrew name of the letter instead.

See the table below for a list of the most important cardinal numbers to learn.

Hebrew ordinal numbers

What’s an ordinal number?

An ordinal number is usually used to describe position or rank (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and so on).

There are many contexts in Israel or conversations with native Hebrew speakers where you might need to know ordinal numbers.

See the table below for reference.

Where to from here?

I often share helpful Hebrew content with Guild members (free to join).

You can join right here (make sure to select Hebrew as your target language).

Also, take a look at my favorite Hebrew (online) courses.