Say ages, prices, floors and dates with the right endings — out loud, without counting on your fingers.
Only three kinds of Spanish numbers change for gender. Uno shortens to un before a masculine noun and becomes una for feminine (tengo un hermano, hay una farmacia aquí — and the same inside bigger numbers: veintiún años, veintiuna páginas). The hundreds 200-900 agree too: doscientos estudiantes but doscientas personas. And the ordinals: primero and tercero clip to primer and tercer before masculine singular nouns (es mi primer día, el tercer examen), while primera and tercera never shorten. Every other number is invariable — and after tenth, everyday Spanish just uses cardinals: el piso doce, not el duodécimo piso.
Below: the phrases that put numbers to work in dates, times and prices, the number slang locals really use, the classic slips — and how you rehearse it by saying real quantities in a real conversation, not doing worksheet math.
Say this
Regional Spanish
Textbooks teach one word. Locals use several — pick your region's and stay consistent.
| English | Mexico | Argentina |
|---|---|---|
| loads of (vague big number) | un chorro / un buen | una banda |
| money (slang) | una lana / un varo | lucas (thousands of pesos) |
| …and a bit (after a number) | quinientos y pico | las tres y pico |
Watch out
The part no drill site can do
Carla
Your grammar teacher for this pack
No worksheets, no number drills. In the Count On Me lessons you talk, and Carla makes the numbers yours: she asks your address and which floor you live on, so el piso plus a number comes out naturally; she lines up four mixed nouns and you put un or una in front of each — un café, una mesa, un libro, una llave — out loud, no pausing to translate. Then it's your birthday and one date you're looking forward to: el quince de marzo, said like you've said it a hundred times.
Blank mid-sentence and nothing bad happens — she waits. That's the practice, without unnecessary judgement.
Quick answers
Before a masculine singular noun: tengo un hermano, never uno hermano. For feminine nouns it's una (hay una farmacia aquí), and the rule repeats inside larger numbers: veintiún años, veintiuna páginas.
It depends on the noun: doscientos estudiantes (masculine) but doscientas personas (feminine). Only the hundreds from 200 to 900 do this — quinientos euros, trescientas páginas — everything else stays fixed.
Primer is the clipped form used only before a masculine singular noun: es mi primer día, el primer piso. Elsewhere it stays full — el primero de enero — and the feminine never shortens: es mi primera clase.
Plain cardinal numbers: el quince de marzo (March 15th). The one exception is the first of the month, which keeps the ordinal: el primero de enero. Years read as one long number: en el año dos mil veintiséis.
Son las tres y media (it's 3:30) — but one o'clock goes singular: es la una de la tarde. For "a little past", locals say y pico: son las tres y pico.