You might find cardinal (counting) numbers the most useful to know—you will need them to express time, record dates, do math, interpret recipe amounts, and, of course, count. In Italian, cardinal numbers are written as one word. Use the following table to memorize numbers from 1 to 100.

The numbers venti, trenta, quaranta, cinquanta, and so on drop the final vowel when combined with uno and otto. Tre is written without an accent, but ventitré, trentatré, and so on are written with an accent.

Beyond 100

Do you remember those good old days before the euro's arrival in Italy when you would pay a few thousand lire for admission to a museum or a cappuccino and biscotti? Tourists needed more than just the numbers up to 100 to get around. Lire are history, but learning numbers greater than 100 might still prove useful. Though they might seem unwieldy, after a bit of practice you'll be rolling them off your tongue like a pro.

You can place items in "order" with ordinal numbers. For instance, il primo is the first course on a menu and il secondo is the second course. Vittorio Emanuele III, who ruled the unified Italian nation from 1900 to 1946, was the third king with that name. Pope Paul V (1605-1621) was the fifth pope with the name Paul. When used with the numerical succession of kings, popes, and emperors, the ordinal numbers are capitalized:

Vittorio Emanuele Secondo (Vittorio Emanuele II)

Leone Nono (Leone IX)

Carlo Quinto (Carlo V)

diciottesimo secolo (eighteenth century)

Notice the regularity of ordinal numbers beginning with undicesimo—the suffix -esimo is added to the cardinal numbers by dropping the final vowel of the cardinal number. The one exception includes numbers ending in -tré. Those numbers drop their accent and are unchanged when -esimo is added. Since Italian ordinal numbers function as adjectives, they must agree in gender and number with the nouns they modify: primo, prima, primi, prime.