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?

  • Lit@lemmy.world
    3·
    5 days 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.

  • AItoothbrush@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    7 days ago

    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.

    • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.socialOP
      2·
      7 days ago

      Yes, the Germanic languages all count separately. Canadian French doesn’t count differently from France French because they call it “French” and it’s essentially completely understandable. I’ve known Bavarians who insist Hamburgers are unintelligible, although it’s all German.

      I can almost understand Danish. Almost. Words, here and there. But not Swedish at all.

      For the purposes of this count, if it’s called a different name, it’s a different language, regardless of how closely related. If it’s called the same language, but they’ve drifted dialectically so much natives can barely understand each other, it’s still the same language.

  • SoulKaribou@lemmy.ml
    2·
    6 days ago

    German, Cantonese, mandarin, English, French.

    I used to know in Swahili too, does that count ?

  • ThePancakeExperiment@feddit.org
    3·
    7 days ago

    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

    • Lit@lemmy.world
      2·
      5 days ago

      Mandarin and Malay counting is very easy and consistent. You mainly just need to know until 10 or until 20 for malay. Malay uses English script, so you can read the numbers, too.

    • SoulKaribou@lemmy.ml
      3·
      7 days ago

      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

      • ThePancakeExperiment@feddit.org
        1·
        7 days ago

        Oh, just like in Japanese, did not know that, they have the ten thousands quirk too. Would love to learn more Chinese and other languages, but I lack free time.

        • SoulKaribou@lemmy.ml
          2·
          6 days ago

          It’s coming from the abacus, meaning most likely all of Asian languages have this.

          I wonder about Arabic ones ?

    • jnod4@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      Quick question, why one would bother to learn romanian specifically? Family? Partners?

  • zagreas@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    I can do it in English, Greek, German, Czech, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish (but I only speak the first 3)

  • Harrk@lemmy.world
    2·
    7 days ago

    4: English (native), Spanish (learned at school and 1-10 is about all I recall), Mandarin, and Japanese.

  • hossein@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    4: Persian, English, Chinese, French

    I used to be able to do so in Esperanto and Arabic as well but not anymore.

    • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.socialOP
      3·
      7 days ago

      Oooo, I want to learn Persian, just for the script. I had a Persian girl friend briefly who taught me to spell my same; I’ve long since forgotten, but it’s gorgeous.

      When I met her, she insisted she was Persian. When I pressed her about it, she said it was for safety, because we were in the middle of Iran-Contra and she was worried telling people she was Iranian would get her animosity. Back then, I thought that was silly, but then, it turns out she understood my countrymen better than I did.

      • hossein@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        Thanks for sharing your story.

        If I weren’t born Iranian, I’d learn Persian too just for the beautiful poems and songs that I haven’t seen in any other language (Arabic and Urdu could come close though).

  • Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    Portuguese, English, Japanese, German and in a good day, Spanish.

    Portuguese is native; English and Japanese I learned from consuming content in those languages; German comes from my family (though I recently started studying it too). And Spanish because it’s very similar to Portuguese so I just need to remember the differences.

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    7 days ago

    English, Spanish, French, Latin, Russian, German, Japanese, Cantonese, …

    So 8. 10 is not very high. I’d have Arabic too, but I can only get to 5 :)

    Edit: I can speak 3 of them, 2 passably, English natively. I took 5 of them in school. I had a Rammstein phase. 17 years Karate. And I dated a Hong Kong girl for 6 years and her family liked to play mah-jong but didn’t speak English.