Ovidiu Predescu's Weblog

Counting to 25

Last evening my son - 4 1/2 years old - was determined to count the number of dominos he was playing with. The only problem was they were more than 10, up until he's able to routinely count. So he asked his mom to help him count, and she taught him to count to 25. She taught him the numbers in Romanian, which are easier than in English. The numbers between 11 and 19 are formed by juxtaposing the digit name, the word spre (to in English), and the word zece (ten in English). The names for the numbers over 20 are composed the same way as in English.

The rest of the evening he spent counting his dominos. Useless to say, they were never 25, but varying between 21 and 25, depending on how many numbers were skipped.