Lesson 5  Numbers (1-9)

Note that the adjective always comes after the noun in Malay. Thus "telephone number" is translated as nombor telefon.
Once you are clear about this it is easy to understand why "your telephone number" becomes nombor telefon anda.
Learn the Malay words for 1 to 9 to perfection as you only need to know five more words (belas, puluh, ratus, ribu, juta ) to be able to read any number at all in Malay. More of this later (in Lessons 8 and 22).
The word for "zero" is kosong. It is often used for games results and for telephone numbers.
Thus Kami menang (dengan) tiga kosong means "We won 3-0".
The telephone number 041695827 is read as kosong empat satu enam sembilan lima lapan dua tujuh.
In this connection a useful sentence to learn (yes it's always good to read out the telephone number a second time) is:
Saya akan baca sekali lagi. (I will read it again).
Could I introduce ordinal numbers at this stage?
In English we would say "first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth."
In Malay it's yang pertama, yang kedua, yang ketiga, yang keempat, yang kelima, yang keenam, yang ketujuh, yang kelapan and yang kesembilan.
What do you notice? Yes, I'm sure you would have noticed that all of them (except for "first") start with yang ke followed by the number in question. Quite simple, isn't it?
Okay, let's see it in practice:
You know that Fatimah has got 3 brothers and 4 sisters and you want to know where she is situated. You would ask her Fatimah anak yang keberapa? (Yes, it is quite common in Malay to say the name of the person you are speaking to instead of saying "you").
And if she is the sixth of the eight siblings she would reply Saya anak yang keenam.
You will now be able to say "for the first time, for the second time, for the third time," etc.
But first let me introduce the word untuk which simply is the Malay word for "for". Another new word is kali which means "time" in the sense of "number of times".
So "for the first time" is untuk pertama kalinya
"For the second time" is untuk kedua kalinya
"For the third time" is untuk ketiga kalinya
As to the question "How many times?" (Berapa kali?) the answer is straightforward as in English: satu, dua, tiga, etc.