How high can you count in any language?

50 in French
10 in Hebrew
A lot in English

8 in Espanol
3 in French
999 decillion, 999 novillion, 999 octillion, 999 septillion, 999 sextillion, 999 quintillion, 999 quadrillion, 999 trillion, 999 billion, 999 million, 999 thousand, 999 in Englitch.

I have a sub-google gap of 67 zeros in my English counting.

Realistically though, if I live to be 107 and start counting now, I could probably count to about a billion.

Even more realistically: because counting that high would require no sleep and no food, I’d probably reach about 32 million before I died when I was almost 79. ;-p

I used to be able to count quite high in French, when I was taking lessons (8th grade). Now I only remember only up to 29. I can count as high as time allows in English. I’m learning Chinese and starting to understand their way of numbers. Sort of like an abacus in language form. 1–10 are separate numbers, but then you get into 1 10 and whatever number for the teens, 2 10s for 20 and so on. New number for various points along the way. Once I get all the nouns down it should be easy.

Pretty high in Spanish because once you know the earlier numbers and the words for 600, 700, etc, you’re really just building on what you know. Thousands are easy too, but I don’t know beyond that.

I never try to count when I am high.

30 something in French
10 in Chinese
8 in German
A trillion in English

According to this calculation, it would take me 218 years to count to one billions, so I would not even make it to half a billion, even if I counted 24 hours a day without sleeping, eating, pissing or shitting, and lived for another 100 years.

English – Trillions.

Spanish – I think the trillions also. Maybe there is some number that is irregular in there that I’m not aware of, but for sure up to a million, and I think I could just keep going.

French – 10

How high you can count, once you reach one hundred, depends on the power of 1,000 that you know. In English that means knowing million, billion, triillion, quadrillion, quinttillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion. I am not sure of what comes afterward, but at 10^27 octillion is far beyond what is useful to know. For more names, check out this Wikipedia article

^^Exactly right. If you had asked me what’s after a trillion I would have had to look it up even though I have learned it or heard it before. I think once it goes above trillions I default to zillions.

God forbid Americans become very familiar with the term quadrillion any time soon. I can only see that happening if our deficit gets to that point.

0-millions in Vietnamese
0-trillions in English
0–99 in Spanish
0–99 in German
1–10 Cantonese
0–99 ASL

0–19 French
30–39 in French
50–59 in French

Lots of gaps in my French apparently! I can’t seem to remember my 20’s and 40’s for some reason.

Wait…I don’t remember how to say zero in Spanish. Which is weird, since I took way more years of Spanish than French or German.

@raum It seems that the usual counting sequences start with 1, so a lot of native English speakers only know the English word for zero. However, I’m going to guess that Spanish for 0 is nada.

I was wrong: it’s cero.

@Brian1946 Good point. German is easy to remember. And French is basically English with an accent.

Nada was a good guess. :P

@raum “And French is basically English with an accent.” So true. But it still took me a year to learn that “eu” is pronounced by pursing my lips while verbalizing the letter “e”. ;p.

How about going to your massive counting thread and posting some counts literally in Vietnamese?

Actually, English is just French with an accent.

@Brian1946 Ha!

@ragingloli I had the same thought as soon as I submitted my comment. I’m always tickled hearing non-American actors doing an American accent.

I just googled the etymology of zero, it’s originally Arabic. So…Arabic with an English or French accent?

Zero in Spanish is cero. Pronounced serr-oh.

0 – 100 in French and Spanish
1 – 19 in German

As for large numbers in U.S. English, I can confidently get to 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 but I don’t know what comes after octillion.

Nada means nothing.