this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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Ok, Lemmy, let's play a game!

Post how many languages in which you can count to ten, including your native language. If you like, provide which languages. I'm going to make a guess; after you've replied, come back and open the spoiler. If I'm right: upvote; if I'm wrong: downvote!

My guess, and my answer...My guess is that it's more than the number of languages you speak, read, and/or write.

Do you feel cheated because I didn't pick a number? Vote how you want to, or don't vote! I'm just interested in the count.

I can count to ten in five languages, but I only speak two. I can read a third, and I once was able to converse in a fourth, but have long since lost that skill. I know only some pick-up/borrow words from the 5th, including counting to 10.

  1. My native language is English
  2. I lived in Germany for a couple of years; because I never took classes, I can't write in German, but I spoke fluently by the time I left.
  3. I studied French in college for three years; I can read French, but I've yet to meet a French person who can understand what I'm trying to say, and I have a hard time comprehending it.
  4. I taught myself Esperanto a couple of decades ago, and used to hang out in Esperanto chat rooms. I haven't kept up.
  5. I can count to ten in Japanese because I took Aikido classes for a decade or so, and my instructor counted out loud in Japanese, and the various movements are numbered.

I can almost count to ten in Spanish, because I grew up in mid-California and there was a lot of Spanish thrown around. But French interferes, and I start in Spanish and find myself switching to French in the middle, so I'm not sure I could really do it.

Bonus question: do you ever do your counting in a non-native language, just to make it more interesting?

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[–] Litebit@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

6 languages to 10 for me.

Counting to 20 or 100 would be a better measure of knowing the numbers of that language, since some languages become weird at 10 or 70 onwards, for example, french.

Some like Mandarin or malay, we just need to mainly just learn to 10, and it is very consistent and logical after that.

[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

English, French, Spanish, Esperanto

As a bonus: binary, hexadecimal, octal (really most bases but I can only go past that up to hexatrigesimal without looking up the symbols) Roman numerals, tally marks

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[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Lol do we count swedish, norweigan and danish as different languages? Btw other languages are my two native ones: hungarian and english, and then i know spanish because i had it in highschool and i lived 4 months there(cant really speak it anymore sadly) and then croatian because i had one if my friends teach it to me. I used to know some japanese but i also forgot that so without that the total is 5 i guess.

Bonus answer: as for everyday counting i do it either in hungarian or english so no i dont count in my non-native languages. My brain gets fried if i try to do maths for example in swedish. If i do english maths its no problem but i still prefer hungarian when i do large calculations without any paper.

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[–] WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 3 points 3 months ago
  1. The same 3 I knew back in kindergarten. But I totally forgot one of them for a long while, which is the one I choose to use when I started kindergarten and resulted in my mom getting a call because I supposedly didn't know how to count.

Not fluent in either of the two non-native languages. My peak was probably 5, but two of which were only for a couple years max and very similar.

[–] MrJameGumb@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

English Spanish and Japanese

[–] DasFaultier@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

German, English, French and Upper Sorabian

Bonus: nope, but I sometimes try counting in Binary with my fingers.

But damn there are some smart people here!

[–] grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 months ago

4:

  • English (native)
  • Spanish (school)
  • French (school)
  • Korean (Taekwondo)

Hopefully next week I'll add Polish--I'm on day 3 of learning it in an app.

[–] ProfessorScience@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

4: English, Spanish, French, and Japanese Bonus: Yes

[–] sevon@lemmy.kde.social 3 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Cool idea. Got a few where I might know just enough to pass this.

attempts collapsedOne two three four five six seven eight nine ten

Ett två tre fyra fem sex sju åtta nio tio

Ein zwei drei vier fünf sechs sieben acht neun zehn

Yksi kaksi kolme neljä viisi kuusi seitsemän kahdeksan yhdeksän kymmenen

Üks kaks kolm neli viis kuus seitse kaheksa üheksa kümme

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[–] Freshparsnip@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago

English, French, Spanish, Inuktituk

I grew up in Labrador, where they teach Inuktituk in school. I also know a little French because I'm Canadian and a little Spainish because of American educational television.

[–] ThePancakeExperiment@feddit.org 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

I can count to ten in more language than I am able to speak (I just love learning stuff):

Can count above ten:
German (native), English, Norwegian, Romanian, Russian, Japanese

Can count only up to ten:
French, Polish, Mandarin

I am learning Romanian at the moment, those are 0-10: zero,
unu/ una,
doi/ două,
trei,
patru,
cinci,
șase,
șapte,
opt,
nouă,
zece

[–] SoulKaribou@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Well if you can count to ten in mandarin, you can count to 100.

It's literally 5 10 2, 5 10 3 for 52, 53 etc.

Add one more word for hundreds, one more for thousands.

After that it gets tough cause numbers beyond thousands are split by packs of 10 thousands, not hundred thousands like most western world (I guess).

Similar to the lakh in Indian

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[–] Kazaxat@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

For this question exactly I can claim 6, but beyond counting to 10 I know very little in most of these.

  • English (native language)
  • Spanish (took a couple years in high school)
  • French (took one class in middle school)
  • Japanese (took a semester in college)
  • Malayalam (parents' native language)
  • Hindi (popular old song with Madhuri Dixit where the chorus counts up to 13, lol)
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[–] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

English, French, Spanish, German, Korean, Pig Latin, Oppish, Ubbi Dubbi

So eight, if the last few count.

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[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

English, Swedish, French, Hebrew, Latin

[–] sxan@midwest.social 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Interested in ancient languages, or just in seminary school?

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

Was taught Hebrew as a child, and learnt to count in Latin just out of interest

[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

English, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin

[–] criitz@reddthat.com 2 points 3 months ago

English Spanish German French

Yes

[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

wa', cha', wej, loS, vagh, jav, Soch, chorgh, Hut, wa'maH

(I can also do English, Latin, Spanish, French, and Japanese.)

[–] toiletobserver@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

English, German, Spanish, ASL... 4

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[–] cabron_offsets@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago
[–] Elaine@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

Four. Sign language, Mandarin + Mandarin hand signs, Spanish, English - and yes, I do use the other languages to entertain myself.

[–] match@pawb.social 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

bow many languages does Japanese count for

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[–] nargis@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

Four. English, Hindi, Marathi (native) and Kannada. Sanskrit as well, but it's a dead language, and I can't speak Sanskrit because the grammar is extremely complicated. Had it in school for 3 years. So 5, if you're counting Sanskrit.

I generally count in English, unless I am using another language with my friends (excluding Sanskrit).

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[–] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

English, French, Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, probably a few others I'm forgetting, I'm not good with translating numbers into sounds, I'd probably have more on the list if you ask me what languages i can say "it's okay" in, oh yeah i got the itchy knee I can do Japanese too. I think I learned Thai at some point before I gave up on their alphabet.

also counting in different romance languages is lame, show me how many language FAMILIES you can count in. oh shit you got the Bantu! oh yeah I can also do turkish

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[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 3 months ago

chinese (epiphany) german (language class) english (epiphany) french (hamilton) japanese (karate) spanish (language class) in no particular order (provenance)

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

I learned how to count to 10 and a few other random bits of Korean in Tae Kwon Do class.

[–] undeffeined@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago

Portuguese, Spanish, French, English, Swedish and Finnish.

[–] pan0wski@infosec.pub 2 points 3 months ago

English, Croatian, Polish and German.

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Spoken: 3 at best. Counting to 10: 6.

Not just counting, but sometimes I might say a word or a phrase in another language because I find it sounds humorous in the moment. Poor Italian gets ridiculed the most 🤌🤌.

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[–] beerclue@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Well, I'm a native Romanian, so I can count (and speak, to various degrees) in Romanian, Italian, Spanish and French. Also, I live in Germany, so add that to the list. Do we count English? If so, I guess 6?

[–] wide_eyed_stupid@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

English, German, French, Dutch, Finnish.

With a bit of effort I might get pretty close in Spanish or Latin, but I'd probably make some mistakes, so that doesn't count.

[–] idriss@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

Arabic, French, English, Chinese (mandarin), Russian.

[–] konalt@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten (English)

Aon dó trí ceathar cúig sé seacht ocht naoi deich (Irish)

один два три четыре пять шесть семь восемь девять десять (Russian)

un deux troix quatre cinq six sept huit neuf dix (French)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (cheating)

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[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Currently it's only English and Japanese. At one point I looked up how to count to ten in French, but I clearly don't remember it. I can also count to seven in Chinese (pitch probably incorrect) because of a song that starts off counting and stops at seven for whatever reason.

Though if we're counting writing, I'd be obligated to add Chinese because, at the very least, 1-10 in Japanese and Chinese are the same for just the numbers alone.

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