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• Classic-Fiction

it’s the drop of water that makes the vase overflow

Countdown

You might expect words to get longer as numbers get bigger, so perhaps it’s a surprise to find that in some languages the words for single digits are a real mouthful. In the Ona-Shelknam language of the Andes, for example, eight is ningayuneng aRvinelegh. And in Athabaskan Koyukon (an Alaskan language) you need to get right through neelk’etoak’eek’eelek’eebedee’oane to register the number seven.

Vital statistics

The world’s vocabulary of numbers moves from the precise …

parab (Assyrian, Middle East) five-sixths

halvfemte (Danish) four and a half

lakh (Hindustani) one hundred thousand

… to the vague:

tobaiti (Machiguengan, Peru) any quantity above four

mpusho (Bemba, Congo and Zambia) any unit greater than the number ten

birkacinci (Turkish) umpteen

Counting in old China

From the very biggest to the very smallest, the Ancient Chinese were highly specific in their delineation of numbers, from:

tsai 100 trillion

cheng 10 trillion

chien a trillion

kou 100 billion

jang 10 billion

pu / tzu a billion

kai 100 million

ching 10 million

right down to:

ch’ien one tenth

fen one hundredth

li one thousandth

hao one ten-thousandth

ssu one hundred-thousandth

hu one millionth

wei one ten-millionth

hsien one hundred-millionth

sha one billionth

ch’en one ten-billionth

Double-digit growth

Counting in multiples of ten probably came from people totting up items on their outspread fingers and thumbs. Some cultures, however, have approached matters rather differently. The Ancient Greeks rounded things off to sixty (for their low numbers) and 360 (for their high numbers) and speakers of old Germanic used to say 120 to mean many. The Yuki of Northern California counted in multiples of eight (being the space between their two sets of fingers) and rounded off high numbers at sixty-four. Some Indian tribes in California based their multiples on five and ten; others liked four as it expressed North, South, East and West; others six because it added to those directions the worlds above and below ground.

Magic numbers

Different cultures give different significance to different numbers. Western traditions offer the five senses and the seven sins, among other groupings. Elsewhere we find very different combinations. The following list is drawn from the Tulu language of India unless otherwise stated:

Three

tribhuvara the three worlds: heaven, earth and hell

trivarga the three human objects: love, duty and wealth

Four

nalvarti the four seasons

Five

pancabhuta the five elements: earth, air, fire, water and ether

pancaloha the five chief metals: gold, silver, copper, iron and lead

pancavarna the five colours: white, black, red, yellow and green

pancamahapataka the five greatest sins: murdering a Brahman, stealing gold, drinking alcohol, seducing the wife of one’s spiritual mentor, and associating with a person who has committed such sins

pancavadya the five principal musical instruments: lute, cymbals, drum, trumpet and oboe

Six

liuqin (Chinese) the six relations (father, mother, elder brothers, younger brothers, wife and children)

Seven

haft rang (Persian) the seven colours of the heavenly bodies: Saturn, black; Jupiter, brown; Mars, red; the Sun, yellow; Venus, white; Mercury, blue; and the Moon, green

Eight

ashtabhoga the eight sources of enjoyment: habitation, bed, clothing, jewels, wife, flower, perfumes and betel-leaf/areca nut

Nine

sembako (Indonesian) the nine basic commodities that people need for everyday living: rice, flour, eggs, sugar, salt, cooking oil, kerosene, dried fish and basic textiles

Ten

dah ak (Persian) the ten vices – named after the tyrant Zahhak who was notorious for ten defects of body or mind: ugliness, shortness of stature, excessive pride, indecency, gluttony, scurrility, cruelty, hastiness, falsehood and cowardice

Expressed numerically

Specific numbers are also used in some colloquial phrases:

mettre des queues aux zeros (French) to add tails to noughts (to