Assamese Numbers 1 to 100: Counting, Reading, and Using Them

Ask for দুই (dui), "two," at a tea stall in Guwahati and nobody blinks. Ask for a price and you'll hear a number word that doesn't sound like two anything stacked together, more like its own small, memorized object. That's the real shape of Assamese numbers: the first ten are short, regular building blocks, and then the system stops being additive in any way English speakers expect. You can't derive "sixty-seven" in Assamese the way you build it in English from "sixty" plus "seven." You largely just have to know it. This post gives you the building blocks that are regular, flags the ones that aren't, and shows you where numbers actually show up: prices, phone numbers, market quantities, and dates.

The first ten: your actual foundation

Everything else in Assamese counting leans on these ten words. Learn them solid before touching anything higher, because several of the higher numbers quietly reuse pieces of them.

Digit	Assamese script	Romanized	English
১	এক	ek	one
২	দুই	dui	two
৩	তিনি	tini	three
৪	চাৰি	sari	four
৫	পাঁচ	pãs	five
৬	ছয়	soy	six
৭	সাত	xat	seven
৮	আঠ	ath	eight
৯	ন	no	nine
১০	দহ	doh	ten

Two things to notice right away. The digits themselves, ১ through ১০, are the same Eastern Nagari numeral shapes used in Bengali, not a separate Assamese set; if you've looked at a Bengali price tag before, these will already look familiar. The second thing: সাত (xat, "seven") opens with that breathy fricative covered in the Assamese pronunciation guide, the sound that lands somewhere between "h" and a soft "kh" rather than a hard English "s." Say "sat" with a clean hiss and you'll be understood, but say it with that lighter rasp and you'll sound like you've actually spent time listening to Assamese rather than reading it off a card.

পাঁচ (pãs, "five") carries a nasalized vowel too, marked by the chandrabindu above the আ. Push a little air through your nose while saying the "a" and you're close. A few minutes of practice with this handful of words gets you further than most learners expect, since এক, দুই, and তিনি alone cover a huge share of everyday counting: one coffee, two children, three days.

Eleven to twenty: why you just have to memorize these

Here's where English speakers usually assume a shortcut exists, and it doesn't. In English, "fourteen" is transparently "four" plus "teen." In Assamese, the teens are their own fused words, descended from older compound forms that have worn down over centuries into something that no longer breaks apart cleanly into "ten" plus the unit digit.

Digit	Assamese script	Romanized	English
১১	এঘাৰ	egharo	eleven
১২	বাৰ	baro	twelve
১৩	তেৰ	tero	thirteen
১৪	চৈধ্য	soidhdho	fourteen
১৫	পোন্ধৰ	pündhoro	fifteen
১৬	ষোল্ল	xüllo	sixteen
১৭	সোতৰ	xütoro	seventeen
১৮	ওঠৰ	üthoro	eighteen
১৯	ঊনৈছ	unois	nineteen
২০	বিছ	bis	twenty

Look closely and you can still spot fossils of দহ (doh, "ten") buried in a few of these: the -ৰ ending in এঘাৰ, বাৰ, তেৰ, and পোন্ধৰ echoes it faintly, the way English "eleven" and "twelve" still carry a trace of old Germanic "one left" and "two left" counting past ten, even though no English speaker parses them that way anymore. You're not meant to derive these forms logically. You're meant to drill them the way you'd drill irregular verbs, as a closed set of ten words that happen to sit between ten and twenty.

The honest approach here, following this post's own rule about accuracy: a couple of these teen forms have minor spelling variants depending on the source you check (পন্ধৰ alongside পোন্ধৰ for fifteen, for instance). The pronunciation stays recognizable either way, so don't let a spelling variant stop you from using the word out loud.

Tens: the other closed set you have to learn by heart

Just like the teens, the tens from thirty up don't build predictably from দহ, either. ষাঠি (xathi, "sixty") doesn't visibly contain দহ or ছয় (soy, "six") the way "sixty" visibly contains "six." Each decade word is its own form.

Digit	Assamese script	Romanized	English
১০	দহ	doh	ten
২০	বিছ	bis	twenty
৩০	ত্ৰিছ	tris	thirty
৪০	চল্লিছ	sollis	forty
৫০	পঞ্চাছ	ponsas	fifty
৬০	ষাঠি	xathi	sixty
৭০	সত্তৰ	xottor	seventy
৮০	আশী	axi	eighty
৯০	নব্বৈ	nobboi	ninety
১০০	এশ	exo	hundred

কুৰি (kuri) is worth knowing too. It means "a score," twenty counted as a unit, and shows up in older or more traditional counting the way English speakers occasionally still say "a dozen" instead of "twelve." You don't need it to function day to day, but you'll hear it from older speakers and in some set phrases.

Building compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine

This is the part that actually rewards memorizing the tens and teens first, because the 21-99 range in Assamese isn't a clean "tens word plus units word" formula the way Hindi or English number-building sometimes pretends to be. Twenty-one is একৈছ (ekois), not বিছ-এক stuck together. It's its own compact word, built historically from the pieces but no longer separable by a learner on sight.

The pattern that is reliable, and worth knowing because it shows up constantly once you're past the basics, is the "one less than" construction for numbers just under a round decade. Thirty-nine is ঊনচল্লিছ (unsollis), built from ঊন- (un-, "one less") plus চল্লিছ (sollis, "forty"), meaning roughly "forty, minus one." Forty-nine follows the identical logic: ঊনপঞ্চাছ (unponsas), "fifty, minus one." That -ঊন prefix is a genuine, productive pattern across the language, and once you notice it, numbers ending in 9 stop being random and start being predictable in shape even when you don't know the exact word yet.

Beyond that specific pattern, treat 21 through 99 the way you'd treat vocabulary rather than arithmetic: a long list to absorb gradually through exposure, not a formula to calculate on the fly. Flashcards sorted by decade (the twenties together, the thirties together) tend to work better here than trying to memorize every number in strict numerical order.

The Eastern Nagari digits themselves

Every table above already shows them, but they deserve their own look, because reading Assamese digits is a genuinely separate skill from reading Assamese number words, the same way reading "7" doesn't require knowing the word "seven" spelled out. Assamese uses the same digit shapes as Bengali: ০ ১ ২ ৩ ৪ ৫ ৬ ৭ ৮ ৯. If you've already spent time with the Assamese alphabet guide, you'll recognize the broader pattern: Assamese and Bengali share almost everything in their writing systems, digits included, and the differences that do exist between the two languages live in letters like ৰ and ৱ, not in how numerals are drawn.

Price tags, bus numbers, and phone numbers in Assam are often written with these digits rather than Western Arabic numerals, especially in smaller markets and on older signage, so recognizing ৫০০ as "500" on sight, without translating through the word পাঁচশ first, is a genuinely useful shortcut. Practice reading multi-digit prices as whole numbers (৫০০ as "five hundred," not as "five, zero, zero") the same way you'd read "500" in English without sounding out each digit.

Using numbers for real: prices, phones, and the market

Numbers matter most in Assamese the moment you're trying to buy something. ইয়াৰ দাম কিমান? (iyar daam kiman?), "how much does this cost?", a question already covered in the essential Assamese phrases post, gets you an answer built from exactly the number words above, followed by টকা (toka), rupees. A vendor saying পঞ্চাছ টকা (ponsas toka) is asking for fifty rupees, no more complicated than that once পঞ্চাছ is solid in your memory.

Quantities at a market tend to stay in the low numbers you already know cold: দুই কেজি (dui kezi), "two kilograms," or তিনিটা (tinita), "three of them," with -টা (-ta) acting as a counting suffix attached to the number itself. That suffix shows up constantly once you're buying more than one of anything, so get comfortable with একটা (ekta, "one [of something]") and দুইটা (duita, "two [of something]") early.

Phone numbers are read digit by digit rather than as one long number, the same habit English speakers have when reading "555-0142" aloud instead of trying to say it as a single enormous figure. That means phone numbers are actually one of the easier real-world uses of Assamese numbers for a beginner: you only need এক through ন (one through nine) plus শূন্য (xunyo, "zero") read one at a time, not any of the trickier compound forms from the twenties onward.

At a fruit stall in Fancy Bazaar: "কমলা কিমান, এটা?" (Komola kiman, eta?) "How much for an orange, one?" "দহ টকা।" (Doh toka.) "Ten rupees."

Ordinal numbers: first, second, third, and dates

Ordinals, first, second, third, work differently from counting numbers and come up constantly once you're talking about dates, rankings, or order of events.

English	Assamese script	Romanized
first	প্ৰথম	prothom
second	দ্বিতীয়	ditio
third	তৃতীয়	tritio
fourth	চতুৰ্থ	soturtho
fifth	পঞ্চম	ponsom

Notice that these don't derive from the counting numbers at all. প্ৰথম (prothom, "first") shares no visible root with এক (ek, "one") the way English "first" shares nothing obvious with "one," either; both languages keep ordinals as a separate, older set of words layered on top of the counting system. প্ৰথম carries that same ৰ (ro) that marks it as distinctly Assamese rather than Bengali, worth noticing if you've been training your eye to spot that letter.

Dates lean on these constantly. "The first of the month" uses মাহৰ প্ৰথম দিন (mahor prothom din), literally "month's first day," and a ranking like "she came in third" would use তৃতীয় in roughly the position English puts "third." You won't need ordinals past fifth or sixth as often in daily conversation, but when a date, a floor number, or a place in a line comes up, these five cover the overwhelming majority of real situations.

What actually pays off here

Counting in Assamese rewards exactly the opposite strategy from counting in a language with a transparent number system. There's no clever trick that lets you skip memorizing দহ through বিছ, or the teens, or চাৰিৰ and তেৰ and all the rest. The honest path is the slow one: lock in one through ten cold, then the teens as a sealed set, then the round tens, and let the twenties through nineties fill in gradually from actual use rather than rote drilling in numerical order. The payoff is real, though. Once পঞ্চাছ টকা stops requiring translation and just means fifty rupees the instant you hear it, bargaining at a market or reading a price tag stops feeling like arithmetic and starts feeling like language. If you want these numbers attached to native-speaker audio so you can hear পাঁচ, সাত, and that ঊন- pattern said correctly rather than guessed from romanization, our Learn Assamese app builds counting into its early units alongside everyday vocabulary.