A buddy of mine once mentioned how much more fun CS lectures on comparative languages would be if car and cdr in Lisp were replaced by hee and ha. (wait for laughter) Kind of the same idea as here, no?
This is comparable to this one time when a gaggle, not quite a bevy, of cuto-chans scampered up to see my son on the beach in Hachi-jo-Jima one time and didn't know the name of the game Peek-a-Boo in English.
ほら、イングリッシュ・ベイビーだ！きゃああああ可愛いいいい！ハーフの子は超可愛いだもんねえええ。
そだよね。
ねえええ。
あら、いない、いない、ばああって英語で何だっけ？
(目を手で隠しながら)
ノ、ノ、ノ、イエス！
Hora, Eengreeshu Baybee da! Kyaaaaa, kawaiiii! Hafu no ko wa cho kawaii da mon neeeeee?
So dayo ne.
Neeeee.
Ara, inai inai baaaa tte eigo de nan dakke?
(me wo kakushi-nagara)
no, no, no, iesu!
Hey! It's an "English Baby" (English-speaking baby...?) Oh....my...God...Soooo Cuuuute! Half (breed) babies are soooo cute, aren't they?
Oh, they totally are, oh my God.
Oh, you are so totally right, they are totally cute, I mean, like, totally.
Wait, how does "not there, not there, THERE!" (Peek-a-Boo in Japanese) go in English?
(covering eyes)
No, no, no, YES!!
Actually, it's a lot to ask a person, even a "well-educated" person to count -- at all -- in any other foreign language. I guess I can count up to about a gazillion (well, technically about a hundred trillion, but being able to make my point after that) in Japanese, well into the trillions in French, Spanish, and possibly German (I can switch to scientific notation, unlimited, in French), I used to be able to count to 99 in Chinese, but now I'm lucky if I can get to four, and I can half-assed read some of the numbers in Arabic (certainly one through three -- with no idea how to say them).
So yeah, it's actually kind of a big deal to learn some of that stuff. So if you wind up on a game show and they ask you to count as high as you can in Swahili, don't feel bad if you flub it (unless you're from Kenya or something...).
Oh, and I can get up to about 4 or 5 in Russian...yippie! ochen horasho
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