Prices and Money: Listening Practice

The same amount, several ways

Twelve dollars and fifty cents can be said in full, “twelve dollars and fifty cents”; in a shorter full form, “twelve dollars fifty”; or in the everyday short form, “twelve fifty”. All three are common, and the shorter the form, the faster it goes by. The short form is the one that catches learners out, because nothing in it says “dollars” or “cents”: two numbers in a row, and you have to know that the first is dollars and the second is cents.

That rule is dependable. “Four ninety-nine” is $4.99, “nineteen ninety-five” is $19.95, “a dollar fifty” is $1.50. The cents part is always a number from one to ninety-nine, so if you hear a second number bigger than that, you are listening to something else, such as a quantity or a total.

Cents on their own

Small amounts drop the dollars entirely: “ninety-five cents”, “fifty cents”, “five cents”. Write them as 0.95, 0.50 and 0.05. The practice tool also accepts .95, but writing the zero keeps your own notes readable.

Hundreds, thousands and the word “and”

In Australian and British English, “and” comes after the hundreds: “a hundred and twenty dollars” is $120, “three hundred and five dollars” is $305. Americans often leave the “and” out (“three hundred five dollars”). The “and” is a signpost, not a new number, so “a hundred and five” is 105, never 1005. Thousands work the same way: “one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars” is $1,250. Listen for “thousand” and “hundred” as place markers and fill the digits in around them.

Two informal forms are worth knowing. “Twelve hundred dollars” is $1,200, the same as “one thousand two hundred”. “Grand” means a thousand dollars, so “two grand” is $2,000, and “bucks” simply means dollars. These are everyday speech; you will hear them in shops, on the phone and in advertisements.

At the counter

A cashier does not say a bare number. You hear “That comes to twelve fifty”, “That’ll be four ninety-nine, thanks”, “Your total is a hundred and twenty dollars”. The amount arrives at the end of the sentence, after words you may still be processing. Level 3 practises these sentences. A small piece of Australian context: one- and two-cent coins were withdrawn years ago, so a cash total is rounded to the nearest five cents, while a card payment takes the exact amount. If the total sounds like “four ninety-five” after you saw $4.97 on the screen, that is why.

How to type an amount

Type the dollars, a dot, and the cents: 12.50, 4.99, 0.95. Whole dollars can be typed with or without the cents, so 12 and 12.00 are both correct for twelve dollars. The dollar sign, spaces and “A$” are ignored. Use a dot, not a comma, for the decimal point: in English the comma groups thousands, so 1,250 and 1250 are the same number, and 1,25 is not a price.