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?

  • AItoothbrush@lemmy.zip
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    4 hours 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.

    • 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.

  • ThePancakeExperiment@feddit.org
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    7 hours 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

    • SoulKaribou@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours 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
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        3 hours 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.

    • jnod4@lemmy.ca
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      5 hours ago

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

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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    14 hours 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.

  • letsgo@lemm.ee
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    16 hours ago

    I have four and so does my wife! English, French, German, Spanish/Russian (learnt before it was uncool).

    Edit: I remembered I can do Dutch as well. So 5 for me, 4 for her. I could only remember 4 and 5 in Latin, had to look the rest up.

  • luluu@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    1. Python

    for i in range(11):
        print(i)
    

    2. R

    for (i in 0:10) {
      print(i)
    }
    

    3. C/C++

    #include <iostream>
    
    int main() {
      for (int i = 0; i <= 10; ++i) {
        std::cout << i << std::endl;
      }
      return 0;
    }
    

    4. Java

    public class CountToTen {
      public static void main(String[] args) {
        for (int i = 0; i <= 10; i++) {
          System.out.println(i);
        }
      }
    }
    

    5. Lua

    for i = 0, 10 do
      print(i)
    end
    

    6. Bash (Shell Script)

    for i in $(seq 0 10); do
      echo $i
    done
    

    7. Batch (Windows Command Script)

    @echo off
    for /l %%i in (0,1,10) do (
      echo %%i
    )
    

    8. Go

    package main
    
    import "fmt"
    
    func main() {
      for i := 0; i <= 10; i++ {
        fmt.Println(i)
      }
    }
    

    9. Rust

    fn main() {
      for i in 0..=10 {  // 0..=10 includes 10
        println!("{}", i);
      }
    }
    

    10. Zig

    const std = @import("std");
    
    pub fn main() !void {
        var i: i32 = 0;
        while (i <= 10) {
            std.debug.print("{}\n", .{i});
            i += 1;
        }
    }
    

    11. Scala

    for (i <- 0 to 10) {
      println(i)
    }
    

    12. Fortran

    program count_to_ten
      implicit none
      integer :: i
    
      do i = 0, 10
        print *, i
      end do
    
    end program count_to_ten
    

    13. Haskell

    main :: IO ()
    main = mapM_ print [0..10]
    

    14. Julia

    for i in 0:10
        println(i)
    end
    
      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        It is astonishingly easy to get basically any LLM to output a simple iteration from one to ten function in all of those languages, and more.

        Here’s Assembly:

            newline db 0xA  ; Newline character
        
        section .bss
            number resb 1  ; Reserve a byte for the number
        
        section .text
            global _start
        
        _start:
            mov ecx, 1  ; Start with 1
            mov edx, 10 ; End with 10
        
        loop_start:
            cmp ecx, edx  ; Compare ecx with edx
            jg loop_end   ; If ecx > edx, jump to loop_end
        
            ; Convert number to ASCII
            add ecx, '0'  ; Convert number to ASCII
            mov [number], ecx  ; Store the ASCII value in number
        
            ; Print the number
            mov eax, 4        ; sys_write system call
            mov ebx, 1        ; File descriptor 1 is stdout
            mov ecx, number   ; Pointer to the number
            mov edx, 1        ; Number of bytes to write
            int 0x80          ; Call kernel
        
            ; Print newline
            mov eax, 4        ; sys_write system call
            mov ebx, 1        ; File descriptor 1 is stdout
            mov ecx, newline  ; Pointer to the newline character
            mov edx, 1        ; Number of bytes to write
            int 0x80          ; Call kernel
        
            sub ecx, '0'  ; Convert ASCII back to number
            inc ecx        ; Increment the number
            jmp loop_start  ; Jump back to the start of the loop
        
        loop_end:
            ; Exit the program
            mov eax, 1        ; sys_exit system call
            xor ebx, ebx      ; Exit code 0
            int 0x80          ; Call kernel
        

        Here’s FORTRAN

        program iterate_from_one_to_ten
            implicit none
            integer :: i
        
            ! Loop from 1 to 10
            do i = 1, 10
                print *, i
            end do
        end program iterate_from_one_to_ten
        

        Here’s COBOL

        PROGRAM-ID. IterateFromOneToTen.
        
        ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
        
        DATA DIVISION.
        WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
            01  WS-Counter PIC 9(2) VALUE 1.
        
        PROCEDURE DIVISION.
            PERFORM VARYING WS-Counter FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL WS-Counter > 10
                DISPLAY WS-Counter
            END-PERFORM.
        
            STOP RUN.
        
        • Zangoose@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Why does that assembly code use a global variable for a loop value?? It’s also ignoring register conventions (some registers need to be preserved before being modified by a function) which would probably break any codebase you use this in

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 day ago

            Because it was generated by an LLM that assumes this one to ten iteration function is the entirety of all of what the code needs to do.

    • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      16 hours ago

      I might be missing something, but don’t most of these count from 0 to 10, not 1 to 10 as was requested?

  • Old Jimmy Twodicks@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    English:

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    Spanish:

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    French:

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    German:

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    Italian:

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    Greek:

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    Mongolian:

    ᠐ ᠑ ᠒ ᠓ ᠔ ᠕ ᠖ ᠗ ᠘ ᠙ ᠑᠐

  • Kazaxat@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    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)
    • 13? Another commenter said they’d learned counting to 7 in Chinese (Cantonese?) because of a song that cuts off at 7. And both 7 and 13 are significant in US culture, 7 being lucky and 13 unlucky… I wonder if there’s a relationship based on immigration and the cultural blending?

      13 is an odd number, though. 12 is widely significant, as are 5 and 10, but 7 and 13 are strange picks.

  • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 day ago

    One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

    Une, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix

    Uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinqo, seiz, siete, ocho, neuve, diez

    Yï, èr, sän, sì, wû, liù, qï, bä, jîu, shí

    Yain, tain, eddero, peddero, pots, later, tater, ovvero, covvero, dits

    So… 5. Far fewer than I can toast in.

  • Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk
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    2 hours ago

    English, French, German is three.

    Oh, also Scottish, American English, Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English, er… Canadian English, Irish English, Singaporean English, oh, and lots of other Xian English where X is one of the various African countries or islands of the Caribbean that use English as their official language.

    Call it another 27 or so.

    And they say maths is a language, so 31 total. What do I win?

  • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago
    1. English (native), Welsh, French, Spanish, German, and binary if I use my fingers 🙌

    EDIT:Bugger, it’s 5. I can’t remember 6 and 10 in German 🙈

        • Actually, it’s the words that the the same as native words which are the hardest to remember, IME, because you’re always questioning it, or you go reaching for a “foreign” word, but if it’s also a native word…

          Funny little story. When I first came back from living in Germany, I’d occasionally forget the English word for things and could only remember the German ones. I don’t know if that happens to many people, but that last year, I don’t think I spoke English with anyone more than a couple of times.

  • Elaine@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

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

  • Dicska@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    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 🤌🤌.

    • Hah! For me it’s Spanish, because I grew up in California and picked up some pidgin phrases. Mostly rude ones, which I doubt I’m pronouncing correctly.

      Oh! I just remembered that I know a handful of Russian phrases, because of an… encounter… in college; but I can’t count to 10 in it. So there’s a deviation on my own question.