Traveling to Europe? At least you need to know the numbers...

Learning a few basic foreign words and expressions, such as greetings, please, thank you, etc. will make your interactions with the foreign natives more friendly; knowing how to ask: “Where is the bathroom?” can also help you out in a pinch.

And yes, you can look up many of such phrases in the foreign travel guides when you need them.

Knowing the basic numbers in the foreign language can be especially helpful.

We found this out when we traveled to China and Japan a few years ago.

We had little opportunity to use many of the Chinese and Japanese words and phrases we had tried to learn.

But knowing the numbers proved very useful when shopping in small stores or in a local market.

Most numbers you’ll see in digital form. You rarely need to spell them.

But you need to understand them when they are spoken. And to learn them, it helps to see them written out.

Lucky English Speakers

The numbering systems of the major European languages are quite easy to learn for English speakers. (The exception are the French numbers 70-99, which will take some effort to learn!).

If you had learned French, German, Italian, or Spanish numbers earlier in school here are a few games to practice with.

French - Numbers 1-20

French - Numbers 21 and beyond

German - Numbers 1-20

German - Numbers 21 and beyond

Italian - Numbers 1-20

Spanish - Numbers 1-20

Spanish - Numbers 21 and beyond

And click on German or Spanish, if you want to learn more about the numbering systems of these two languages.

(French and Italian will follow shortly)