Lesson 70 — Counting higher

You can count to ten. Today you learn how Amatu builds every bigger number out of the ten small words you already have — no new digits to memorize, just a tidy pattern.

1 · Say this

du dasa san (doo · DAH-sa · sahn) twenty-three.

Read it literally: du (two) · dasa (ten) · san (three) — two-ten-three. That's how Amatu says 23. The tens come first as "how many tens," then the leftover digit.

2 · A closer look: the building blocks

dasa (ten) is the hinge. Stack a digit in front for the round tens, add one behind for the rest. Two brand-new bigger words join it today: sata (hundred) and afe (thousand).

Amatu	Means
`dasa`	10
`du dasa`	20 (two tens)
`du dasa san`	23 (two tens, three)
`sata`	100
`afe`	1000

So san dasa is 30, go dasa un is 51, and bigger names stack the same way — sata for hundreds, afe for thousands. The logic never changes.

🧭 Why it's built this way Amatu's numbers are perfectly regular — two-ten-three every time, with no "twenty," no "thirteen," no irregular teens to trip over. Once you have the ten digits and the magnitude words dasa / sata / afe, you can say any number by the same simple rule. (English makes children memorize "eleven" and "twelve"; Amatu just doesn't.)

⚠️ Watch out Keep dasa and sata distinct: "DAH-sa" (ten) vs. "SAH-ta" (hundred) — different first consonant, both with clean open "ah" vowels. afe is "AH-feh," two even beats.

3 · Your turn

Out loud:

twenty-three → du dasa san
thirty → san dasa
one hundred → sata
twenty friends → du dasa yari
one hundred people → sata nara

4 · Tonight's phrase

du dasa san — twenty-three — every big number is just digits stacked on dasa, sata, afe.

30-second check

Cover the page. (1) Say twenty-three. (2) Say thirty. (3) Say one hundred. Three for three? With ten digits and three magnitude words, you can now build your way to any number you need — age, year, price, count. Try counting your yari by namu — twenty friends named, one by one.

⬅️ Back: Lesson 69 — Recap · ➡️ Next: Lesson 71 — How you know