Example sentences
zhè这ge个yī一qiān千kuài块。
This is 1000 yuan.
nà那lǐ里yǒu有jǐ几qiān千rén人。
There are thousands of people there.
The story behind the character
千
The earliest 千 is a person (人) with one stroke drawn through it. That extra line is the only thing keeping it apart from plain 人. Xu Shen wrote 千, 十百也: ten hundreds. The ancients borrowed the word for person to say a thousand and added a mark to tell the two apart. 三千, 千万, 千言万语. Every one of them is a marked-up person.
Related words
Practise the numbers with audio →Every number from 1 to 100, each digit tap-to-hear, plus the tone changes that trip people up.