How To Read Math - the Basics

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Today we’ll be reading some mathematical expressions. How to read math? If you learn math, you will sooner or later (rather sooner, I would say) come across mathematical expressions. It may happen, especially if you are not a native speaker of English, that you don’t know how to read such expressions aloud. If you are a native speaker of English, then you probably attended a school in an English-speaking country where you had math classes, so you will probably be acquainted with all the basic mathematical expressions that are taught at school.

Anyway, math is a vast subject and there are lots of mathematical expressions you may come across. This is why I had to make just an arbitrary selection. Let’s start with something basic, numbers.

Table of Contents

How to Read Math? – Numbers

Reading numbers is generally one of the first things students of English, or any other language learn. A less common thing to learn is negative numbers and numbers with a decimal point. As far as former are concerned, there are two ways of reading them. Here’s how you read them:

$5$

five

$-5$

negative five

minus five

$5.34$

five point three four

Fractions

A fraction consists of a numerator and a denominator. The general rule is to read the numerator (the number above the line) as a cardinal number) and the denominator (the number below the line) as an ordinal number. The denominator also takes a plural ending if the numerator is not 1. An alternative way is by using the preposition over between the numerator and denominator, which are then both expressed as cardinal numbers. Two special cases include the fractions with 2 and 3 in the denominator. Have a look:

$\frac{1}{2}$	one half
$\frac{3}{4}$	three quarters
$\frac{1}{7}$	one seventh one over seven
$\frac{5}{7}$	five sevenths five over seven

Powers

A power consists of two parts: the base and the exponent. There are several ways of reading powers. We have two special cases. These are the powers where the exponent (the number written as an upper index) equals 2 or 3. With other exponents there are also basically two ways of reading them.

$3^{2}$

three squared

the square of three

$2^{3}$

two cubed

the cube of two

$5^{4}$

five to the power of four

five (raised) to the fourth power

Roots

With roots we also have two special cases, very much like with powers. Here’s how you can read roots:

$\sqrt{4}$	the square root of four
$\sqrt[3]{8}$	the cube root of eight
$\sqrt[4]{16}$	the fourth root of sixteen

How to Read Math? – Comparisons

Now some operators. Numbers are often compared. Here’s how you can compare them:

$a=b$	a is equal to b
$a>b” alt=”a>b” align=”absmiddle”></td> <td width=$ a is greater than b
$a<b$	a is less than b
$a\geqslant b$	a is greater than or equal to b
$a\leqslant b$	a is less than or equal to b