How to talk about numbers correctly in English (figures, times, dates etc.)
2025-09-21 22 min
Description & Show Notes
Struggling with time, dates, prices, or phone numbers in English? In this episode, we unpack the hidden pitfalls of using numbers in everyday English—from telling the time and writing dates to reading phone numbers and formatting prices. Get clarity on the small details that make a big difference—and pick up practical tips you can use right away! For German native professionals who need to speak better English. For Leaders of international teams. For Germans, who have always struggled with English.
[0:00 – 0:21] – Introduction and welcome
[0:24 – 3:15] – Celebrating the 50th episode and turning 50
[3:15 – 4:38] – The 50 Golden Nuggets gift
[4:39 – 5:59] – Talking about numbers: once, twice, ordinals
[6:07 – 7:49] – Saying larger numbers correctly: “Million vs. Milliard”
[7:49 – 9:19] – Plural of “Million” and common mistakes in writing
[9:20 – 11:17] – Talking about time: AM/PM and clock formats
[11:19 – 11:40] – Talking about midday and midnight
[11:43 – 13:11] – Expressions with “times,” multiplication, and duration
[13:12 – 14:13] – Saying telephone numbers in English
[14:14 – 15:13] – Answering the phone in English
[15:28 – 16:59] – Writing and saying dates: British vs. American format
[17:06 – 18:20] – Currency symbols and decimal points
[18:21 – 19:42] – Symbols: dash vs. minus and other common mix-ups
- Dash or hyphen (–), not “minus”
- Forward slash (/)
- Backslash ()
- Underscore (_)
- Colon (:)
- Semicolon (;)
- Exclamation mark (!)
- Hashtag (#) – widely known today
[20:32 – 21:05] – Final reminder: Get the “50 Golden Nuggets”
[21:06 – End] – Next episode preview and farewell
Would you like to work with us?
Rebecca: https://rebeccadeacon.com
Birgit: https://birgitkasimirski.de/
Haben Sie Schwierigkeiten mit Zeiten, Daten, Preisen oder Telefonnummern auf Englisch? In dieser Folge beleuchten wir die versteckten Fallstricke bei der Verwendung von Zahlen im alltäglichen Englisch – vom Angeben der Uhrzeit und Schreiben von Daten bis zum Lesen von Telefonnummern und Formatieren von Preisen. Verschaffen Sie sich Klarheit über die kleinen Details, die einen großen Unterschied machen, und holen Sie sich praktische Tipps, die Sie sofort anwenden können!
[0:00 – 0:21] – Einführung und Begrüßung
[0:24 – 3:15] – Feier zur 50. Folge und zum 50. Geburtstag
[3:15 – 4:38] – Das Geschenk der 50 goldenen Nuggets
[4:39 – 5:59] – Über Zahlen sprechen: Einmal, zweimal, Ordnungszahlen
[6:07 – 7:49] – Größere Zahlen richtig aussprechen: „And” und „Million vs. Milliard”
[7:49 – 9:19] – Plural von „Million” und häufige Fehler beim Schreiben
[9:20 – 11:17] – Über die Zeit sprechen: AM/PM und Uhrzeitformate
[11:19 – 11:40] – Über Mittag und Mitternacht sprechen
[11:43 – 13:11] – Ausdrücke mit „Zeiten”, Multiplikation und Dauer
[13:12 – 14:13] – Telefonnummern auf Englisch sagen
[14:14 – 15:13] – Anrufe auf Englisch entgegennehmen
[15:28 – 16:59] – Datumsangaben schreiben und sagen: britisches vs. amerikanisches Format
[17:06 – 18:20] – Währungssymbole und Dezimalpunkte
[18:21 – 19:42] – Symbole: Bindestrich vs. Minuszeichen und andere häufige Verwechslungen
• Bindestrich oder Hyphen (–), nicht „Minuszeichen“
• Schrägstrich (/)
• Backslash ()
• Unterstrich (_)
• Doppelpunkt (:)
• Semikolon (;)
• Ausrufezeichen (!)
• Hashtag (#) – heute weithin bekannt
[20:32 – 21:05] – Letzte Erinnerung: Holen Sie sich die „50 Golden Nuggets”
[21:06 – Ende] – Vorschau auf die nächste Folge und Verabschiedung
Transcript
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, and welcome to the 3 English Experts.
I'm Birgit.
I'm Dave.
And I'm Rebecca.
And welcome to this episode.
3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome back to this episode of our podcast 3 English Experts.
This is a special episode.
Maybe one or two of you might have noticed.
This is episode number 50 we are sending out.
50.
Here we go.
Celebrating, yes, 50.
That sounds a lot.
It is a lot.
It is a lot.
Yes.
Taking us almost two years.
Wonderful.
We're still enjoying it.
And hopefully you do as well.
We thought, what can we celebrate with?
What can we talk about?
And since this is bringing us to numbers, 50 years, and that's not so easy sometimes for learners also to sort out, we thought we'd talk about numbers, how to say days correctly, how to talk about birthday maybe.
And Dave and I, we can reveal we have also celebrated our birthdays 50 years.
So we are kind of 50-ish, 50-ish.
You can say that around.
A little bit.
In our very, very early 50s, would you say that?
I'd say early 50s, yes.
Very early, very early 50s, yes.
So Birgit is in her early 50s.
I'm in my, or yes, my early 50s.
Dave is in his, yes.
And Rebecca is still in her early 20s.
Oh, yes.
I've never grown up.
Yes.
Well, that's not true.
That's not true.
But somebody said, I think I like this idea that because I'm in my late 40s, unfortunately, that it's nicer to be in your early something because when you say you're late, you know, so actually once you go over the hump, you know, you get over the 50, then you're in your early 50s.
That sounds like I'm in my early 50s.
When you say you're late something, it's all a bit downhill, isn't it?
I don't know.
No, but in case of our podcast, I wouldn't worry.
That's true.
We're not going downhill.
That's good, I think.
It's our 50th episode, which is pretty good, isn't it?
Just by the way, while we're talking numbers there, there's the early, there's the one in the middle, which is mid, and then there's the late.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
And she's in his and he's in hers.
Yeah.
That's the wrong way around, isn't it?
He's in his and she's in hers.
Oh, dear.
This 50s is blowing my mind, guys.
Are you mid or late 50s, Dave?
I think I'm early 60s to date.
Feeling like.
Having a senior moment.
Senior moment.
Forgetting my head.
Yes.
So, Dave, what are we doing to celebrate?
What have we got for our listeners to celebrate our 50th?
Oh, yes.
We're having our golden nugget early and at the same time because our golden nugget is actually a collection of 50 golden nuggets that we would like to invite you to send us an email and we get it to you as a PDF that you can have a look at and learn the 50 golden nuggets from the three English experts and we'll ask you to then just go to this website, which is Rebecca.
3EnglishExperts.com.
And there you'll have a link to put in your email address and we'll send it not by snail mail.
We will send it via email to you.
Yeah, that's pretty nice.
The topics will be anything about English.
Generally, our tips and tricks, the golden nuggets from our side, but also with things like communication, grammar, idioms, tech tools, maybe also a few ideas of books that we've also put in once or twice, recommendations that we have.
So there's going to be lots of different topics for golden nuggets that we've had in the past, but also just general stuff we think would be really cool for you to help you with your English language learning journey.
Super.
That sounds excellent.
And you mentioned once and twice.
And that brings me to the first subject of today, I think, because that's when we talk of numbers, how to say that correctly.
British people would very often use once, twice.
In your case, I think you said that Americans might say one time, two times, three times.
So it's an option here.
I think it's not wrong, but British do use once, twice, three times, four times and so on.
And very important, of course, when we think of ordinal numbers, first, second, third, who comes first, second, third.
It may be obvious, may be easy, but in fact, we do hear mistakes with that.
That's why we mention it.
We wouldn't mention anything that people don't struggle with.
But from our expertise, we know people do struggle.
And especially with first, you know, the ending ST, second ND, third RD with the dates.
Yeah, I think it's also the TH, isn't it?
The fourth, fifth.
Yeah, this is one of the things that especially, I don't know, a lot of my clients, they struggle with this TH sound, you know, the fourth, fifth.
It is.
It's tricky.
It's not easy to say.
It is not easy to say.
Rebecca, I think you have something on your list you want to talk about.
Yes.
On the topic of numbers.
So one thing I have is just reading out numbers.
So hundreden, I always talk about the hundreden, hundreden thirties.
It's not hundred thirty.
So if your number is 130, it's hundreden thirty, one hundreden thirty or a hundreden thirty.
You can also say a hundred or one hundreden thirty.
But there is this little tiny UND after the hundred.
And if it's missing, I always think it sounds a little bit funny.
Again, maybe Americans sometimes do that.
I'm not quite sure, but I would always say it's a hundreden thirty, hundreden thirty or five hundreden fifty two.
And the AND always comes after the hundred.
So it's not after the thousand, for example, it would be one thousand one hundreden fifty or one million two hundred thousand five hundreden twenty two.
So it comes after the AND.
Sorry, after the hundred.
Yeah.
But if it's missing, I think it sounds a bit.
You notice, even though it's this tiny little UND.
It does.
It does kind of stand out, doesn't it?
Yep.
Sticks out, absolutely.
Yeah.
And the other point is this million and milliard and billion, which is very confusing.
So in English, obviously, we have the million, which is the same as a German million.
If you win a million euro in German jackpot, it's the same million you get in the UK.
But your milliard is our billion.
We don't have milliard, which is very confusing because, of course, Germans also have a billion, which is actually our trillion.
Whoever came up with that, I think it's confusing.
There's a whole Wikipedia thing about this, why it's like that.
And it's really confusing, Dave.
And I think I'm not 100% sure, but I think that there's a difference between a British trillion and a billion, maybe even an American billion and trillion.
Could be.
Could be.
I think, again, it's this milliard thing because there's this.
Yeah.
I have this thing in the middle.
It's really confusing.
But yes, be careful with your milliard.
And one other point, actually, when I see.
With your.
And also with the plurals.
Yeah, with my milliard and you know, I've got loads of them.
With the millions that you get.
Yeah.
It's always important to put on the S.
Sometimes people miss off the S with million.
Three million.
You need to put the S on three millions.
Not put on the S.
You don't put the S on.
You don't put on the S.
What?
You're having another senior moment, Dave.
I don't believe your age thing.
I can't wait till I turn 100.
The 100th episode.
The 100th episode.
Oh, yeah.
The PowerPoint presentation.
When I see presentations, often in Germany, you see this Mio.
They write M I O for million.
We don't do that as well.
So it's just a small M.
So like eight million would be eight with a small M.
So no Mios, please.
I have to apologise.
I'm very echoey today because I've moved into a new house.
And I've got no furniture.
So if I'm echoey, that's why.
Can't you use one of your billions?
I've got millions of boxes in my million dollar house.
No, it's not.
Yeah, that's why I'm echoey.
Okay, Dave, what was your topic?
Times.
As in on the clock times.
Okay.
We often hear German speakers saying 20 o'clock, for example.
And so usually we don't use the 24 hour in that way.
We would usually say 8 p.m. or 8 a.m. in the morning.
Do you know what the a.m. and the p.m. stand for, Rebecca or Birgit?
Do you know what it's short for?
Well, it's Latin for sure.
It's Latin for sure.
But do you know what they mean?
Anti or past.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Very good.
Yeah.
So anti-Meridian and post-Meridian.
That's what it stands for.
But it's a.m. And I think there's usually a dot, isn't there, between the two words when you write it out?
There's a dot in between.
So first of all, yeah, with the times, it's 8 p.m. or 8 a.m. And then we have, of course, the quarter past, the half past, quarter to, right?
Of course, it's all very simple.
But also with times, it's quite important.
If you are using 24 hours, then it's I think it's more sort of a maybe also even a military thing and maybe timetables or something.
But most of the time we just use the normal time, 8, 9, 10.
And then in the morning or in the afternoon, of course, instead of using a.m. or p.m. I would say in speaking, you know, we wouldn't say so often when you're writing, you might use the 24 hour because it's like just to be absolutely clear what, you know, it's working in the evening or morning.
But I would never say 20.
I think is it twenty hundred hours or something you have to say, you know, and it's like that sounds very military.
But writing, I would always generally stick with you generally use 24 hour clock just to be clear.
But speaking, I would just say, you know, 8 p.m. or 8 in the evening or 8 in the morning.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
Or during lunchtime, because that people ask me, what do I say from midday or at midday?
And so people like that word.
It's not a number, but I know people are not always sure.
And midnight is 12 a.m. That's another thing people often ask.
Yeah.
What's 12 midnight is 12 a.m. Midday is 12 p.m. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
Yes.
And you said something, Dave, about with the times and I on my list, I thought, oh, my God, that's me at times because my name and times three times for three times.
That's also talking about numbers and amounts, amounts, numbers.
Again, that comes as a something question mark.
I can see my people.
It's whether it's countable or it's not countable.
So you have amounts of your amounts of time, numbers of hours you can work.
Yeah.
And then multiplying, they are saying three times a week or divided by.
And so that's sometimes difficult.
Minus plus adding with all the numbers.
You can do that with numbers.
You can do that without numbers, adding time.
And when we think of the clock, I just thought maybe sometimes I hear a half hour literally translated, but it should be half an hour, half, half an hour later.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I hear that as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's what I say.
I think people think, oh, it's such an easy topic.
You know, it's like old times.
And you do clocks when you start school and in English.
You know, and it's one of these things I think people either forget or they never learn to properly.
And then they go, well, how do I say that?
How do I say that?
And I go like, you know, it is it's kind of it is one of those things that I think people don't always remember.
Hmm.
Yeah.
They might feel bad about because they forgot.
But it's right.
It's just exercise.
It's training.
The same with and I think Rebecca is on your list.
We're talking about telephone numbers.
Also important.
Very important.
Yes.
When I first came to Germany, this just freaked me out with the whole Germans putting numbers together.
So in English or in British, we always every number is individual.
So your number is 0 6 9 6 7 7 3 4 1 2.
You know, it's not 24, 85, 69.
But the Spanish do that, too, don't they, Dave?
They do that.
They put the numbers together in like two groups of two or whatever or groups of three.
And it's like, oh, my goodness, that freaked me out.
So we always say every number individually.
So it's quite easy.
And the only other thing is the 0.
You know, we generally say we don't normally say zero.
I mean, you can say zero.
It's not wrong.
But often people say it's 0 6 9 or 0 double 1 4 or something like that.
It's typical to say 0 when you're talking about telephone numbers.
And also answering phones.
Very important.
Maybe not necessarily if you're dealing business, obviously.
But if you're dealing with private people, sometimes people may answer the phone in England just with the phone number.
So don't be surprised if they just say the phone number and not the name.
That's what I really find.
That's a real British thing, isn't it?
0 1 6 8 4.
My mom used to do that and then forget the number halfway through.
1 4 2.
And I'd be like 5 8.
I would be like answering, telling the number.
But the other thing is that you wouldn't say here is.
That's another one.
Here's Rebecca.
Yeah.
And even not here is.
It's Dave.
Dave speaking or something.
I saw that on the Internet.
Here is.
Yeah.
Here is.
You wouldn't say that.
It's Rebecca.
Dave speaking or Birgit.
Or the number.
Or the number.
Or the address.
I think the number is a bit old school.
But.
You wouldn't say the address.
Like Cauchembruch, this and that street, Müllerstraße.
No.
No.
You just say the number.
It's weird.
And then.
It's weird.
It's weird.
Then people know if they called the right number, I suppose.
But then if my mom gets the number wrong, then it doesn't help anybody.
You don't know your number by heart.
Do you know your number?
I do.
Yeah.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway.
OK.
What about dates?
That's a tricky one, isn't it?
Because dates are done differently in the States compared to the UK.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like in Germany, we would and in England, we would have the day first.
So the first, for example, one and then the month in the middle and then the year at the end, whereas the Americas put the month first, the day in the middle and then the year, which can be quite confusing.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
And I think writing dates also people get a bit confused, but I think there are so many ways of writing dates on that.
You can say.
The 4th of July, or you can just write the number four and write July, you can write 4th July.
You know, there are so many or July 4th.
You can have the month first and then the.
So we're meeting on July 4th or the 4th of July.
There are so many different ways of writing it.
I think.
Would you agree?
I'm just wondering because I often say without the the the and the of.
When you're writing it in an email, for example, so meeting on a date, so on.
But you speak it on the 3rd of July, let's say.
But I would always say not to write the the and the of when I'm coaching people.
But you're right.
I think it's one of these very grey zones where I think people do pretty much what they like.
But I would always say leave out the the and the of.
It's not necessary.
Yeah.
Of course you say it.
You don't need it.
Yeah.
Mm hmm.
Anything else?
Prices.
Prices.
Yes.
Money.
For example, often in if bills or receipts or something like this, we normally put the currency in English.
We put the currency first and not at the end.
And so this is often things I see Germans writing the currency sign, the euro at the end.
And most of the time in English you will see the dollar sign or the pound sign or whatever it is usually first.
So that's always something just to be to be aware of when you're seeing and writing prices.
And of course, the comma changes 150 would be one dot dot 50.
We had the the point the dot the the point thing was an issue also.
So 1000 would have the comma.
Yeah.
I sometimes see that on slides when people share documents with me and it's all in English.
But then they overlooked this fact and they get confused.
It's a minor fact.
Maybe it doesn't do much harm, but that changes the number.
It can change the meaning.
Yeah, definitely.
It really can change the number.
And I think it's a small thing, but it's like you say, it gets overlooked.
I just I mean, ultimately, it's always the opposite.
When Germans use a comma, we use a dot.
When they use a dot, we use a comma.
It's just the opposite of what you're not what you would normally do.
But it can, you know, from figures and things, it can cause huge.
Yeah.
Frequencies.
So it is a big one.
Very confusing.
Why can't we all just do the same?
Because you drive on the left.
I know.
Just would be easier if we want to be different.
What else did we have?
Prices.
Oh, we had symbols, for example, like dot and comma and all of these kind of things.
So obviously we have things like forward slash and colon and semicolon.
I think the one I hear a lot in German, they say minus.
So they're talking about maybe an article number.
So the article number is three, four, five minus Zed a or something.
And we would not say that.
We would always say that's a dash.
It's a hyphen.
You can also say a hyphen, but you can also say dash.
It's four dash Zed.
We're not minus any other symbols that get mixed up.
Hashtag everybody knows now.
Exclamation mark is not so widespread.
Forward slash.
Backward slash.
Yeah.
Underscore.
That's the other one.
Underscore.
Yeah.
People forget about.
Yeah.
I'm mentioning.
Mianqin, you said Zed.
For the Americans, of course, that is Z.
Z.
So they talk about the A to Z and things.
And we talk about the A to Z of things.
The Golden Nugget.
So the Golden Nugget, as we said at the top, is 50 golden nuggets free for you.
So head over to our webpage at 3englishexperts.com and you can add in your email address and we'll send you the 50 golden nuggets.
Some we've already shown you or said to you.
Some are absolutely brand new.
So you'll be able to take a lot from them.
Sounds good.
And next time we're going to follow on from this numbers topic and we're going to talk about trends.
So describing trends.
So how to talk about increases and decreases and rise and fall and describing.
Yeah.
Maybe describing diagrams, graphs, or if you're doing a presentation and you need to talk about sales figures, how to describe figures with some nice, interesting vocabulary.
So looking forward to seeing you then.
Hopefully you're there for the 51st episode.
And the 52nd, 53rd, 54th, 55th.
Bye for now.
Bye for now.
Bye bye.
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