Never be stuck without numbers

July 8, 2001 4:06 PM

Never be stuck without numbers ane twa thrie fower fyve sax seiven aicht nyne ten < Count to ten in scottish and over 4000 other languages.
posted by stevridie (8 comments total)

zompist is a great site, this guy has way too much time on his hands.

It's fun to compare the similarity of Indo-European numbers. The common origin of nearly all eurpoean (and most indian) languages is obvious when you look at the similarity of the numbers.

don't get rodii started on my folk-linguistic reasoning though ;-j

Another interesting one is Austronesian which before the time of European colonial expansion was the world's most geographical widespread language group.
posted by lagado at 4:49 PM on July 8, 2001

eurpoean is a clever anagram of European.
posted by lagado at 4:51 PM on July 8, 2001

Numbers are usually a good place to start comparing languages, once you get past one and two, which often come from other sources.
posted by rodii at 5:17 PM on July 8, 2001

That's all very well, but I want to know how to curse in other languages.
posted by dong_resin at 8:21 PM on July 8, 2001

Dong_resin, here ya go. *Everything* is on the internet.
posted by Kevs at 11:12 PM on July 8, 2001

Hey that's great, it's got my two favorites:

diu lay lo may - cantonese
hijo de puta - spanish
posted by lagado at 11:38 PM on July 8, 2001

The internet is such a rich tapestry of puerile hatred.
posted by dong_resin at 1:04 AM on July 9, 2001

Kutagimny ye, you Uzbekistani shitfuck!
posted by dong_resin at 1:07 AM on July 9, 2001