The Sounds

  • 0 – Z, S, soft C
  • 1 – T, D, TH
  • 2 – N
  • 3 – M
  • 4 – R
  • 5 – L
  • 6 – J, CH, SH, soft G
  • 7 – K, Q, hard C, hard G
  • 8 – F, V, PH
  • 9 – P, B

Translating Words to Numbers

You may want to see some examples of interchanging words and numbers, so the following chart shows some words and the numbers that they signify.

Word Number
book 97
door 14
shoes 60
paper 994
train 142
guitar 714
lamp 539
glove 758
orange 426
Word Number
staple 0195
thunder 1214
pencil 9205
calendar 75214
computer 73914
olympics 53970
calculator 757514
tournament 142321
Strong Bad 0142791

Sounds, Not Letters

In the examples above it is possible to change the words into numbers just by looking at the letters, because the letters sound exactly as you would expect. However, many English words have letters that sound different than they normally sound, and sometimes letters do no make a sound at all. The following list gives some examples.

Word Number Explanation
ball 95 There is only one L sound
attic 17 There is only one T sound
clock 757 The “ck” together only make one K sound
match 36 The “tch” together only make one CH sound
witch 6 The “tch” together only make one CH sound
chemical 7375 The “ch” together only make one K sound
reign 42 The “g” is silent
half 8 The “l” is silent
knee 2 The “k” is silent
painting 9212 The “g” is silent (for most people)
ocean 62 The word is pronounced “oh-shun”
lotion 562 The word is pronounced “loh-shun”
ax 70 The “x” makes a K and an S sound

A few words may not have the same consonant sounds depending on who pronounces them. An example is the word picture. Some would pronounce this word as “pic-shur” (9764) and others might say “pict-shur” (97164). Another word that may represent different numbers is wolf. If you use words like this to memorize numbers then you should be sure to always pronounce them the same way.

Translating in Your Head

This technique makes it very easy to do the translation from words to numbers in your head because you don’t have to worry about how the word is spelled. Simply sound out the word and pay special attention to all of the consonant sounds. Each time you hit a new consonant, you’re at a new number.