Swiss German Numbers: 1 to 10, How to Count, Prices and Time

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The Swiss German numbers from 1 to 10 are eis, zwäi, drü, vier, föif, sächs, sibne, acht, nüün, zäh. Those are the Zürich-based forms taught in our app Grüezi. Move to Bern or Basel and some of them change, above all two and three.

Swiss German has no single standard and no official spelling, so any list of numbers is really one dialect’s list. This one takes you to 20, then through the tens, hundreds and thousands, and on to saying a price and a time. Unless a line says otherwise, every form is the Zürich-based one from the app’s data.

Swiss German numbers 1 to 10

Vier and acht are written exactly as in Standard German. Nine shows a pattern worth knowing: Standard German eu often becomes ü or üü, so neun is nüün and heute (today) is hüt. We cover more of these in our post on Swiss German patterns.

Five needs a warning. On its own it is föif, but 15 is füfzäh and 50 is füfzg, and the app’s own dialogues also write föifzg in prices. With no official spelling, none of these is a mistake.

How to count in Swiss German from 11 to 20

The teens are the small number plus zäh, and the first part often shrinks: drü gives drizäh, and sibne gives sibzäh.

Tens, hundreds and thousands

The tens end in -zg where Standard German has -zig, so zwanzig becomes zwänzg. Between the tens the small number comes first, as in Standard German. A shoe size of 43 is drüüevierzg, three-and-forty, with a linking -e-. In the app’s ticket scene, 36 francs is written out as sächs und driissg Franke.

Bigger numbers simply run together: 150 is hundertföifzg, and 2,500 is zwäitusigfüfhundert. That last one shows how loose the spelling is: the app writes a thousand as tausig, -tuusig and -tusig.

How to say a price in Swiss German

Say the francs, then the rappen as a plain number. A franc has 100 rappen, and when a price has both, the word Rappe drops out.

At the till you will hear Das macht… (that makes…), and the question to ask is Wieviel choschtet das?, “How much does it cost?”. Stutz is the everyday slang for a franc and never takes a plural: en Stutz, zäh Stutz, hundert Stutz. Bills and signs say Franken or CHF. For the full scenes at the bakery and the supermarket, see our post on Swiss German phrases, and for the first word you will say there, what Grüezi means.

How to say the time in Swiss German

For “at” an hour, say am and the number. From four upwards, the number takes an -i.

The same form tells the time on its own: Es isch scho elfi is “It’s already eleven”. Two and three stay as they are in the app’s sentences, with um zwäi for “at two” and am Drüü for “at three”. Seven appears both as am sibne and, with a half hour, as sibni. You will also meet the word Uhr, as in Es isch scho nüün Uhr, “It’s already nine o’clock”.

Half hours count towards the next hour, as they do in Standard German. Halbi zäni is 9:30, not 10:30, which catches out British readers used to “half ten”. In the same way, halbi drüü is 2:30, halbi sächsi is 5:30 and halbi sibni is 6:30. In the app’s phone call to a dentist, the practice offers Um halbi zäni, gaat das?, “At half past nine, does that work?”.

First, second, third

The ordinals you need first are de erscht, de zweit and de dritt. The most Swiss of them is in the national holiday: De erscht Auguscht isch en Fiirtig, “The first of August is a holiday”.

How the numbers change by region

The app’s regional notes cover two, three and the tens. These are the forms it gives. Where a region is not listed for a number, the app has no separate form for it.

Basel’s numbers sound close to Standard German: the app’s note gives zwanzig, fuffzig, nünzig for 20, 50 and 90.

Two also has an older twist: it used to change with the gender of the noun. The University of Zurich, writing about the Kleiner Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz, gives the Bern forms zwee Manne, zwo Fraue, zwöi Chind (two men, two women, two children), against zwee, zwoo, zwaa in Thurgau. The Swiss public broadcaster SRF says the three forms were in use across most of German-speaking Switzerland until the middle of the 20th century, and that most people in the canton of Bern now say zwöi for all three. The app also uses one form, zwäi, as in zwäi Chind and zwäi Franke. So one form is enough to start with, and you can pick up your neighbours’ version as you hear it. Our post on Zürich and Bern German has more on how the two differ.

Where Grüezi comes in

Grüezi is our app for learning Swiss German, on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android. Its dialect is Zürich-based, and if you pick another region when you set it up, the lessons show a note with your region’s form for words such as zwäi and drü.

The first unit is free, and it includes the lesson Numbers 1-20. The bakery and train station dialogues are free too, and that is where drü Franke föifzg and sächs und driissg Franke come from. So are the first five levels of Schwiizerli, the listening game, whose first level plays eis and zwäi. The numbers flashcards, the lesson Swiss Francs & Paying and the other dialogues are part of Premium.

Most of the numbers above have a short clip you can tap. The clips are text-to-speech in one Zürich voice, not recordings of a person. Numbers spelled as in Standard German, such as vier, acht, elf, zwölf and hundert, have no clip, because the speech engine reads those as Standard German.