2758: The World’s Biggest Number Jul 9, 2024

Lots of cultures use what is referred to as an indefinitely large number to express something enormous and uncountable. In English this would be “a million” used in lots of phrases like “thanks a million” or “I did X a million times”, and while it may make sense to use this number in such a context, especially as it is relatively concise as a base unit, many other languages use different ones. For instance, Celtic languages like Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish use 100,000, French uses 36, Hungarian 26, and some languages make up numbers altogether such as Swedish’s femtioelva literally “fifty-eleven” (not actually 61).

One number used conspicuously often for this purpose is 10,000, but not simply as a construction. Many languages, especially ancient languages, had a separate word for ten-thousand; compare Hebrew’s 

תשעת אלפים (tishat elfim) = 9,000

רבבה (rivava) = 10,000

עשרים אלף (esrim elef) 20,000

This has the sense of ‘many’ and doesn’t resemble the rest of the words for multiples of a thousand, though in the plural form it can also mean the somewhat uncounted “tens of thousands”. This exact same phenomenon around 10,000-words occurs in Greek μυριάδες (myriades), hence English’s ‘myriad’, Sanskrit’s अयुत (ayuta), and Chinese 萬 (wan) used in many East Asian cultures. 

There are too many examples to count, not even including made up numbers like ‘umpteen’ or ‘bazillion’, so please write back any others you know.

2531: Order in Welsh Numbers Nov 17, 2021

Welsh numbers are already very complex with two different systems, but part of the complexity is the variation. Celtic languages have many sounds which mutate and different adjectival forms for these numbers, but on top of that the order of the words is not necessarily set. The numbers are stated with prepositions, such as "un ar ddeg ar hugain" (one on ten on twenty) to say '31'. When this is used as a modifier, the noun can be put in the middle of the phrase as well such as "un ar ddeg ar hugain o gŵn" (31 dogs) literally "one on ten on twenty of dogs" which can be reordered as "Un ci ddeg ar hugain", literally "one dog ten on twenty".

2530: Welsh Numbers Nov 16, 2021

People may be aware that French numbers use somewhat mathematical descriptions, like soixante-dix for 70 meaning sixty-ten, and 'quatre-vingts' for 80 meaning 'four-twenties' but Welsh numbers are even more extreme. Indeed, there are actually two different systems, one decimal and one vigesimal. The decimal system operates similarly to English's decimal system, but the vigesimal is base-20 for all numbers so to say '30' it is 'deg ar hugain' (ten on twenty), '40' is 'deugain' (two twenty) and likewise for 60 and 80. To say ‘70’ is 'deg a thrigain' (ten and three twenty) and likewise for 90, but 50 is 'hanner cant’ (half a hundred) which also does not exist in the decimal system. The vigesimal system is more common when talking about dates and ages etc. and people may switch back-and-forth. There are many internal variations as well, including dropping the prepositions, or adjectival forms.