LingoflyHundreds and order: dvisti, piatsot, siomyi
Hundreds come in two shapes, and the first one is the oddball. Dvisti is the only hundred-word without sto inside — a fossil of an old dual form. After it the row straightens out: trysta, chotyrysta, and from five on piatsot, shistsot, simsot, visimsot, dev'iatsot. For example: “У (U) залі (zali) двісті (dvisti) пʼятдесят (piatdesiat) місць” (mists) — The hall has two hundred and fifty seats. A rule from the Ukrainian course: worked out on examples, not…
How it works
Hundreds come in two shapes, and the first one is the oddball. Dvisti is the only hundred-word without sto inside — a fossil of an old dual form. After it the row straightens out: trysta, chotyrysta, and from five on piatsot, shistsot, simsot, visimsot, dev'iatsot.
Spelling patrol: no soft sign inside piatsot, whatever your ear suggests. But the apostrophe after p and v is required: piatsot, dev'iatsot.
Ordinals grow from cardinals, and four of them swap stems on the way. Try gives tretii, chotyry gives chetvertii, sim gives siomyi, visim gives vosmyi. The rest behave: piatyi, shostyi, deviatyi, desiatyi.
They decline like ordinary adjectives: na chetvertomu poversi, u siomomu riadu, z desiatoi hodyny. And counting stays on its two rails. Dva, try, chotyry take the plural naming form (try dni); from piat the of form begins (piat dniv).
Table
| the number | the hundred | the ordinal |
|---|---|---|
| dva | dvisti | druhyi |
| chotyry | chotyrysta | chetvertii |
| sim | simsot | siomyi |
| visim | visimsot | vosmyi |
By example
How the rule settles in your head
A rule is not memorized from an explanation. It is memorized from an attempt to use it and a mistake — that is why the app delivers it mixed in with words, not as a separate lesson: it resurfaces exactly where you forgot it.
Frequently asked
Why piatsot has no soft sign in Ukrainian?
Spelling patrol: no soft sign inside piatsot, whatever your ear suggests. But the apostrophe after p and v is required: piatsot, dev'iatsot.
What does it look like in a Ukrainian example sentence?
“У (U) залі (zali) двісті (dvisti) пʼятдесят (piatdesiat) місць” (mists) (U zali dvisti piatdesiat mists) — The hall has two hundred and fifty seats. A rule is easier to test on sentences like this than to memorize as a wording: what surfaces in conversation is the sentence.