Arabic Numbers 1 to 100: A Complete Guide with Pronunciation

Numbers are some of the most practical words you can learn in any language — you need them for prices, phone numbers, dates, ages, and addresses. The good news is that Arabic counting follows clear patterns, so once you know 1–10 and the words for the tens, you can build almost every number up to 100.

This guide focuses on Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the shared form understood across the Arab world. Each number is shown with the Arabic word, its transliteration, and the Arabic numeral.

Numbers 1 to 10

Start here — these ten words are the foundation for everything that follows.

Numbers 11 to 19

The teens are formed by joining a unit with a form of “ten” (عَشَر, ʿashar). Note that 11 and 12 are slightly irregular, but the rest follow the same shape.

The tens: 20 to 90

Here is where the pattern pays off. Most of the tens are built from the unit you already know, plus the ending ـون (-uun). Notice how 30, 40, 50 and so on echo 3, 4, 5.

Building the in-between numbers

For any number between the tens — like 21, 35, or 99 — Arabic says the unit first, then “and,” then the ten. The connector is و (wa), meaning “and.”

• 21 → واحِد وَعِشْرون — waahid wa-ʿishruun (literally “one and twenty”)
• 35 → خَمْسة وَثَلاثون — khamsa wa-thalaathuun (“five and thirty”)
• 99 → تِسْعة وَتِسْعون — tisʿa wa-tisʿuun (“nine and ninety”)

Once you internalise this “unit + wa + ten” rule, you can produce every number from 21 to 99 without memorising each one separately.

A note on the numerals

Although Arabic is read right to left, the numerals are written left to right, exactly like English. The shapes differ — these are often called Eastern Arabic numerals — but the order is the same, so 2026 reads in the familiar direction. In many countries you will also see the Western digits (1, 2, 3) used alongside them.

How to make the numbers stick

Reading a list once won’t lock these in. Numbers reward active, spaced practice:

1. Count real things out loud — stairs, items in your cart, the minutes on a timer.
2. Practise your own phone number and age in Arabic until they’re automatic.
3. Review yesterday’s numbers before learning new ones, so they resurface just before you’d forget.

That last point is the key to long-term memory. For the full method, see our guide on how to learn Arabic vocabulary fast, and pair it with the 50 most common Arabic words for beginners so your numbers have sentences to live in.

That’s exactly the loop Kalam Daily is built around — a new word every day, native-speaker audio, and spaced repetition that schedules your reviews for you. Start counting today, and you’ll be reading prices and dates in Arabic before you know it.