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.
- My native language is English
- 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.
- 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.
- I taught myself Esperanto a couple of decades ago, and used to hang out in Esperanto chat rooms. I haven’t kept up.
- 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?
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
If you didn’t cheat that’s actually pretty impressive.
Yes I cheated. To be fair, I used each of those languages at one point and knew how to do it but was to lazy to look it up again.
Edit: except Fortran
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.
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
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.
Nice. Surely you could manage Lisp (or Scheme)?
God. Haskell’s monads give me nightmares.
class CountToTen
is the perfect example of why I dislike Java.
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
You know Malay too.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
You show a good mastery of the hindu-arabic numerals.
I’m sorry, I just don’t recognize those, but I’d love to learn them!
The accent on the German is rather thick, though.
Mongolian is similar to Sanskrit, and other Indo-Aryan languages: ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ १०
damn mongorians
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.
Uno, dos, très, quatro, cinco cinco, ses
You know it’s kinda hard
You’re pretty fly
For a white guy
3 to 10 but 6 to 5
25 or 6 to 4
… siete, ocho, nueve, des!
Hah! I just needed to get started!
Spelling is probably horrible wrong, but Ima take it. 7! 7 languages, ah, ah, aahhh!
German, Cantonese, mandarin, English, French.
I used to know in Swahili too, does that count ?
“Used to” is iffy, but sure. Why not? I’m sure if you read it once again, you’d be able to do it until you forgot again.
I can do it in English, Greek, German, Czech, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish (but I only speak the first 3)
Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Latin, Kmer.
Wow. Impressive list!
Yeah, no issue with counting to 10. The rest however… Im really bad in learning languages, I’ve had German and French in school for 13 years yet I can’t speak either. I know English besides Dutch because of the internet and subtitles on TV. I wanted to learn languages like Norwegian, Latin and Russian but I gave up because I just don’t remember words that well. Same with history, I remember stories but can’t remember dates. I’m better at logic, like math and chemistry. But at least I know how to order up to 10 beers in multiple languages.
at least I know how to order up to 10 beers in multiple languages.
Critical life skills !
Most languages go all wonky after 10. German is pretty regular after 12 (12 is such an important number in human history!), French is absolutely insane. Conlangs like Esperanto are the really only highly regular ones.
German and Dutch (my native language) are similar systems. Still weird imo, naming the numbers in the wrong sequence: 32 is “two and thirty” instead of “thirty two”.
Check out the system of Denmark. French looks rather normal after seeing the Danish.
I love this map!
4: English (native), Spanish (learned at school and 1-10 is about all I recall), Mandarin, and Japanese.
2: English and Japanese. (Took Karate classes as a kid)
Hah! Aikido was how I learned counting in Japanese!
English, German, Austrian and Eastern Swiss
Eastern Swiss is German, you sly dog. So
it’sis Austrian. I think they even call it “German” don’t they? That’s like distinguishing “American” and “British”.Edit: fucking autocorrect.
You might have got me there
To 10? English and Spanish.
If we can drop the requirement to 5 I can add Turkish.
- 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 🙈
“Fünf” I can understand, but you forgot sex?? :-)
Funnily enough, I always remember it wrong 🙈
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.
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.
English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Latin, Classical Greek.
That makes 11, I guess.
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.