Counting to Ten, Completed: 四 / 五 / 六 / 七 / 八 / 九

The six digits Lesson 5 promised. None of these continue the 一/二/三 tally pattern — most are old phonetic loans or pictograms of something else entirely, repurposed for counting. One of them, 四, has a documented reason for breaking the pattern, which directly answers the question Lesson 5 deliberately left open.

Your six new components

Quick recall — click each card to flip it:

The other three origins, briefly: 五's oldest form is uncertain — Wiktionary lists theories ranging from a tally mark to a pictogram of palm lines on an open hand. 六 is "perhaps a shed," possibly borrowed from the similar-sounding word for hut/cabin (廬) and then never given back. 九 is the most charming: a pictogram of a bent wrist/forearm, originally meaning "elbow" — it came to mean "nine" through the image of a fist tightening as it bumps up against the next number, ten. (Wiktionary: 五, Wiktionary: 六, Wiktionary: 九)

Stroke order

四 reuses Lesson 1's enclosure rule — outer frame first, close last — just with two extra strokes added inside before the close:

1. 丨left vertical (outer frame)
2. 𠃍top horizontal turning into the right vertical (one stroke, completing the frame)
3. 丨left inner vertical
4. 丨right inner vertical
5. 一bottom horizontal, closing the box last

七 and 八 are both simple, confirmed two-stroke sequences:

1. 七: 一horizontal, then ㇆vertical with a hook, crossing it
2. 八: 丿left diagonal, then ㇏right diagonal — drawn separately, never touching

五, 六, and 九 don't have a confirmed sequence I'm confident enough to write out here. Look up the animated mainland-standard order for each at StrokeOrder.com before practicing them by hand.

Where the payoff shows up: the full system

Every digit from Lesson 5's 十 logic now works at full range — multiply before 十, add after:

五 + 十 → 五十 wǔ shí — 50

八 + 十 + 六 → 八十六 bā shí liù — 86

九 + 十 + 九 → 九十九 jiǔ shí jiǔ — 99

That's every whole number from 1 to 99, readable and writable, from ten characters total. Watch for these on receipts, room/gate numbers, phone numbers read aloud, and prices anywhere characters are used instead of Arabic numerals.

Check your recall

Go further

Etymology sources for every character above are linked inline. For the rigorous version of any of them, see the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters.

Out in the world: with 一 through 十 complete, try reading any character-written number you come across — prices, dates, addresses, phone numbers — cold, before checking the Arabic-numeral version next to it.

Something unclear, or want to go deeper on any of this? Ask your teacher — that's what these sessions are for.