h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: How to count to 10 in different languages - A844274
Author: Tango (Guru)- Help out GuideDog, the GuideML editor, at A745887 - U32077

Please let me know 1-10 in any languages you know so I can make a complete collection. Thanks!

Cantonese

Yat
Yee
Sam
Say
Nng
Luk
Chat
Bat
Gau
Sap

(could be pronounced better, but I'll need to refer to books.

ROMAN

I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X

Sorry - Cantonese maybe 5, 6 are Mmm, Lok. Had to refer to Lonely Planet for verification.

Hate to be picky, but you have arabic numerals there, not Roman ones. Roman numerals are:

I
II
III
IIII or IV (which the Romans never used)
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX or presumably VIIII
X

My mother told me the hindi numbers are:

Ek
Do
Teen
Char - Tea or Chai is drunk at 4.00pm
Panch - Hence Punch, which traditionally has five ingredients
Jay
Sart
Art
Now
Das

Though I can't vouch for the spelling.

And there are various shepherds counting systems.

Yan
Tan
Tetherer
etc

Though, unfortunately I cannot remember any further than that.

It is a pity that one cannot have tables in edited entries, because here is an entry which cries out for tables if ever one did.

Good luck with it.

B

I put the Roman Numerals in my Post 2. I'm guessing they got moderated because they are in a foreign language!

Laughing so much my sides are hurting....

Crying, too...

Hey ho.

B

Turkish is bir, iki, üç, dört, bes (that should have some cedille underneath the s... don´t know how to do that), alti (no dot on the "i"), yedi, sekiz, dokuz, on

In Swedish, 1 to 10 is:

Ett
Två
Tre
Fyra
Fem
Sex
Sju
Åtta
Nio
Tio

In Finnish, 1 to 10 is:

Yksi
Kaksi
Kolme
Neljä
Viisi
Kuusi
Seitsemän
Kahdeksan
Yhdeksän
Kymmenen

Thanks everyone, I'll include them all and credit you all as co-authors.

You are right, that shouldn't say roman, but it shouldn't say arabic either. Arabic numbers are slightly different, those numbers are based on arabic. I think maybe they are call Latin, which would explain my confusion, Romans speak Latin. BTW its IV and IX, you can only have 3 of one letter in a row. Clockmakers for some reason use IIII, just a tradition I think.

Thanks,

Tango

PS Please spread the word about this, we should be able to get loads more languages. Oh, and can someone give me the French, I wouldn't know where to start.

Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix.

Dunno about the feminine versions though.

B

1-10 in French:

Un
Deux
Trois
Quatre
Cinque
Six
Sept
Huit
Neuf
Dix

1-10 in German:

Eins
Zwei
Drei
Vier
Fünf
Sechs
Sieben
Acht
Neun
Zehn

1-10 in Esperanto:

Unu
Du
Tri
Kvar
Kvin
Ses
Sep
Ok
Nau
Dek

1-10 in Spanish:

Uno
Dos
Tres
Cuatro
Cinco
Seis
Siete
Ocho
Nueve
Diez

Ouch! *rubs head* Hi ben!

Ben is right - 5 in French is cinq

Estonian:
üks
kaks
kolm
neli
viis
kuus
seitse
kaheksa
üheksa
kümme

Notice the similarity with Finnish

I could do it in Russian too but I am not sure with Latin alphabet here

I don´t know if this link is welcome... I found it with google:

http://www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml

Blast! I was hoping noone would find any sites like that. Guess that rather spoils the point of this entry. Any ideas how we can improve on his 4500 languages? I guess we could do 1-11 just to be different.

Hey! I thought the important thing is to have something like it in the guide... And I bet they don´t have Klingon or any other weird language listed

* to have a look*

They have "constucted langauges" which might include klingon. Yes, it would be nice to have this in the guide, but there is not much point having it as a collabrative entry, I could just copy all the info from that site.

Wan't there a play or a piece of music from the 60s called Yan Tan Tethera?

Anyways, one to ten in northern England sheep-counting goes like this:

yan
tan
tethera
pethera
pimp
sethera
methera
hovera
covera
dik

How come in all of this my posting was the only one to get moderated?

The oh-so-innocent Trout

It still could be interesting to have it as an article here. It doesn´t need all the linguistic bit I think... with all those maps of where which kind of numbers are spoken... e.g. it´s quite sufficiant to have the german eins, zwei, drei,... and drop out the oins, zwoa, drai,... from Bavaria... they still write then as eins, zwei, drei...