translate numbers in different languages

Apparently a constant source of amusement for Swedes and Norwegians, Danish requires a solid understanding of fractions to comprehend its larger numbers. You can try that one next time you’re counting sheep to get to sleep or perhaps it would be confusing enough to keep you awake for even longer.ĭanish, like French, requires some sums. So: one is tip^na (thumb), six is dopa (wrist), and sixteen is tan-nata (ear on the other side). The Oksapmin count using not just fingers, but also seventeen other parts of the arms, neck and head, which they follow along a path from the right thumb to the left pinky. Although it doesn’t seem entirely logical to an English speaker who has never counted anything in multiples of twenty-seven (or indeed anyone who is used to the now ubiquitous mathematical method of using multiples of ten), it reveals an entirely new way of approaching counting. An even more complex way of utilizing body parts to count is seen in Oksapmin, a language from New Guinea, which uses a base-27 system. So: if they were to read out the number 37, they would say vuk lajuneb xcha’-vinik, a rough translation of which would be ‘the seventh toe of the second man’. When these run out, the speaker simply refers to the digits of the person standing next to them. Their language refers to an individual’s ten fingers and then ten toes.

Many miles away from France, a similar counting method was established in Mexico among the Tzotzil-speaking Mayans. The reason is that French uses base twenty for its counting system, something that English used to, too (if you’ve ever heard ‘four-score and seven’ in a historical film, then they meant eighty-seven). So now we were doing multiplication? By ninety we’re back to addition: quatre-vingt-dix: four-twenty-ten. In fact it is quatre-vingt meaning four-twenty. You can venture a guess for eighty it must be sixty-twenty right? Wrong. Seventy is soixante-dix, which translates literally to sixty-ten. Multiples of ten are simple up until soixante, which is sixty. While it is true that in the way that they are written down, numbers often don’t vary between languages, actually saying them aloud is another matter entirely. In fact, the way numbers are said in different languages often reflects a completely different way of interpreting them.Īny English speaker who has learned even basic French will testify that learning numbers is a nightmare. Mathematics is often described as a universal language, completely separate from the seemingly endless interpretations of different dialects.

Translate numbers in different languages