# ¥ 0.50 五毛



## sb70012

_¥_ 0.50

Hello,
I asked my Chinese friend that how _¥_ 0.50 should be said since I'm looking for it's equivalent in English. 
My friend said it can be said as the following:

*五毛 (Wǔmáo) *

But something makes me confused. As you know less than 1 yuan should be *Jiao* or *fen*. Why don't you use these two words when your money is less than 1 yuan?

Thank you.


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## Sauliu

1毛=1角=10分，1元=10角=100分。5角就是0.5元


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## sb70012

*Jiao* or *fen*. Why don't you use these two words when your money is less than 1 yuan?


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## Lamb67

Google wumao and a lot of information would come through. In our case I think it is just colloquialism


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## SuperXW

角 formal, written
毛 colloquial
Just like dollar (formal) and buck (colloquial).


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## Youngfun

jiao and fen are not the same thing.

*角 jiao* is 1/10 of a yuan, i.e. ¥ 0.1 - equivalent to English _10 cents_ or _dime_. People say *毛 mao* in speech
*分 fen* is 1/100 of a yuan, i.e. ¥ 0.01 - equivalent to English _cent_.

About 元 yuan, people also say *块 kuai* in speech.


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## philchinamusical

Back in 1940's, there once was banknote of 一毫, which is 0.1 分.

I saw one of those dated 1946, when I was little. My Dad kept several old banknotes then. Unfortunately, they were all lost when we moved around.


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## sb70012

What if it's  *¥ 0.34* 

How will you say  *¥ 0.34 ?*


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## yuechu

3毛4


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## tinsh

sb70012 said:


> What if it's  *¥ 0.34*
> 
> How will you say  *¥ 0.34 ?*


0.34元（零点三四元），equals to 三角四分，or 三毛四（oral Chinese in some places）。


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## SimonTsai

I am 22 years old. Here most young people know of but rarely say '毛', '角', or '分'. (The terms '五毛黨' and '五毛小粉紅' are exceptions. They are set phrases. No one says '角' instead.)

NTD 0,34 is read as '新臺幣零點三四元'. (I prefer the decimal comma to the decimal point.)


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## petrokov

SimonTsai said:


> I am 22 years old. Here most young people know of but rarely say '毛', '角', or '分'. (The terms '五毛黨' and '五毛小粉紅' are exceptions. They are set phrases. No one says '角' instead.)
> 
> NTD 0,34 is read as '新臺幣零點三四元'. (I prefer the decimal comma to the decimal point.)


I'd like to add to this so as to show the difference in speech patterns between different locations. I lived in 鄭州 until two years ago, and for amounts below 1元, the word 毛 was almost always used. For example, 水煎包是五毛一個 is a very natural sounding sentence to me. I never heard anyone say 角 or 零點啥啥 in spoken Chinese. No one used 分, because people don't usually care about dividing money into such small amounts, but I've seen the word 分 used in books written by mainland authors that take place a few decades ago, back when 1分 was actually worth something.


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## SimonTsai

I think that young people here are unfamiliar with '毛' because today, '元' is the smallest monetary unit in everyday life. Decades ago, '一粒餃子五毛' was possible.


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## philchinamusical

“毛” is more common in the northern and western parts of China, while “角” in the eastern and southern parts of China.
“分” used to be a more common unit while I was little, like 40 some years ago. We had a famous kid song called 《一分钱》, almost all kids in school would learn that song, singing that "I" picked up 1 cent and handed it to the police as a good kid would do.


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## sb70012

Thank you.

How should I say the following in English?

*¥ 0.34
¥ 0.50 *


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## tinsh

这个问题难倒了我。或许可以这样读：
thirty four Chinese cents
fifty Chinese cents


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## 2PieRad

tinsh said:


> 这个问题难倒了我。或许可以这样读：
> thirty four Chinese cents
> fifty Chinese cents




Yeah, but it's hard to imagine a context where you'd have to specify that they're _Chinese _cents. Usually, _fifty cents _is enough.
-I went to the market in Beijing and got a tofu skewer for fifty cents. [price accuracy not guaranteed]
-Fifty cents American/Canadian? (Fifty cents in American/Canadian currency?)
-No, fifty cents Chinese. (<-although it follows the same pattern as the sentence above and therefore should be technically correct, this sentence just doesn't roll off my tongue as easily.)


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## tinsh

Yes, fifty cents is enough. I mistakenly assumed that cent was only used for US currency.


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## sb70012

*¥ 0.34
 ¥ 0.50 * 
Why didn't you say "thirty-four fen" or "fifty fen"? Why didn't you use "fen" instead of "cents"?


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## SuperXW

sb70012 said:


> *¥ 0.34
> ¥ 0.50 *
> Why didn't you say "thirty-four fen" or "fifty fen"? Why didn't you use "fen" instead of "cents"?


1. We doubt that many English readers don't have the concept of "fen". "Cent" is easier to understand.
2. We have a unit for 10 Fen/0.1 Yuan, which is Jiao, and its colloquial name "Mao". That's why in Chinese, we call ¥ 0.34 ¥ 0.50 - 3 Mao 4, 5 Mao, but never 34 Fen, 50 Fen.


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## tinang

For the price and values, it is better to considerate the location. 

It is formal in written for 1 元( dollar), 1 角 ( 10 cents), 1 分 ( cent) widely in Chinese Culture. 1 毛 (10 cent) is colloquialism mainly in china.

In the structure of Chinese language to present value, it is quite specification for every digit with different term / unit 元角分.

In English, 34 is thirty-four. "Thirty" is one word and means 30 units. In Chinese, 34 is 三十四. 三十 is two characters. 三 is value of 3 and 十 is unit of 10. 
( Please note that the writing form 0.34 is Arabic numerals. It is not originally in Chinese for long long ago.)

To present the price locally, no need to specify chinese dollar. To talk with foreigners, use the district currency instead such as RMB / CNY, TWD & HKD. You can say "thirty-four cents" in English and add RMB /CNY to specify the currency. You also can say 3 Mao 4  in Mandarin in China.


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## Helloword

"MAO" is originally read "hao", for the convenience of bookkeeping, often "Hao" save pen for "MAO". Over time, practice becomes practice. There are still places where the word "millio" is read instead of "MAO". Such as 10 cents used in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. 
*“毛”本是读“毫”,为记账方便,往往将“毫”省笔为“毛”*。久而久之,习非成是。现在仍然有的地方读“毫”不读“毛"。如香港特别行政区使用的一毫硬币。 
ref wu mao


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## tinang

danielbai said:


> i am a native chinese.  only people like me could answer this.
> In chinese，成语，is  a very important part.
> and one of them says: 一毛不拔。。。。
> which means：not willing to lose a tiny  profit。
> see，mao  means a tiny amount of money that not worth caring。。
> with Internet goes on，五毛党（people who get paid a tiny amount of money to send out ADs） became very popular，and 毛  became even more negetive。


毛 is neutral character and the meaning is hair in any time. It also a unit of China currency.
For the word,  五毛 is modern word and used for internet as  只為中國政府說好話的網絡評論員 50 Cent Party - Wikipedia


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## tinang

Helloword said:


> "MAO" is originally read "hao", for the convenience of bookkeeping, often "Hao" save pen for "MAO". Over time, practice becomes practice. There are still places where the word "millio" is read instead of "MAO". Such as 10 cents used in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
> *“毛”本是读“毫”,为记账方便,往往将“毫”省笔为“毛”*。久而久之,习非成是。现在仍然有的地方读“毫”不读“毛"。如香港特别行政区使用的一毫硬币。
> ref wu mao



"毛"和"毫 is two different Chinese characters and the pronunciation is not the same in Cantonese. 

"毛" is hair as noun and can be adjective as the light weight such as 毛髮, 羽毛, 毛遂自薦 
"毫" is unit as measurement for very little bit such as   毫升, 毫髮, 毫米, 明察秋毫,  差之毫釐   

"毫" is the unit (=10 cents) in in Hong Kong currency over 100 Hundred years and there is no related to "毛". 

"差之毫釐，繆以千里" means "The difference in little bit, it will give big false."


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