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?

  • hossein@lemmy.sdf.org
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    43 minutes ago

    4: Persian, English, Chinese, French

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

  • ThePancakeExperiment@feddit.org
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    2 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

    • jnod4@lemmy.ca
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      28 minutes ago

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

  • Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 hours 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
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    9 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.

  • grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org
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    10 hours ago

    4:

    • English (native)
    • Spanish (school)
    • French (school)
    • Korean (Taekwondo)

    Hopefully next week I’ll add Polish–I’m on day 3 of learning it in an app.

  • selkiesidhe@lemm.ee
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    12 hours ago

    Hmmm… English, French, German, Spanish. Japanese numbers, yes, but only half that if we’re counting things (iykyk 🫤). I should learn Mandarin 1-10…

    My pronunciation ofc is abysmal.

  • zlatiah@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Four. English, Chinese, Japanese, German.

    Among these German is the only one where I’m not confident in my language capacities… So I almost beat OP in the bet :P I just happened to have learned German up until ~A2 for career reasons but dropped it since my plans changed. Other three I’m all very fluent in. I am also learning French but ironically I only know 1/2/3 because I’m a complete newbie…

    I spent the last 10 years in the US so my internal monolog is a bit messed up… I primarily count in English which is not my native language. If it is a long number I’ll use Chinese since it is more efficient (one syllable each for 0-10)

  • letsgo@lemm.ee
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    12 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.

  • Freshparsnip@lemm.ee
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    17 hours ago

    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.

  • luluu@lemmy.world
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    1 day 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
    
    • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      12 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?

      • 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.

  • ProteanG6777@lemmynsfw.com
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    17 hours ago

    5 languages so far (German, french, english, 2 african languages). It would probably be 9 when mandarin, cantonese, spanish and arabic gets up to par in a few years.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    17 hours ago

    Currently it’s only English and Japanese. At one point I looked up how to count to ten in French, but I clearly don’t remember it. I can also count to seven in Chinese (pitch probably incorrect) because of a song that starts off counting and stops at seven for whatever reason.

    Though if we’re counting writing, I’d be obligated to add Chinese because, at the very least, 1-10 in Japanese and Chinese are the same for just the numbers alone.

  • Kazaxat@lemmy.world
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    19 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.