About imprecise numbers
I like the Spanish invented, imprecise numbers. I wonder how they are in different languages.
For example, we have:
- Un puñado (a handful, "puño" is the closed hand)
- dieci... (10+?) (diecimuchos (10 + a lot), diecipocos (10+ a few), etc). Same with venti... (20+), treintay... (30+?) etc.
- taytantos (30 to 99)
- EDIT: cienes y cienes (several hundreds, a joke/malformation of the correct "cientos y cientos" (hundreds and hundreds))
- tropecientos (several, many hundreds)
- miles y miles (thousands and thousands, up to 99,999 I suppose)
- tropecientosmil (several, many hundred thousands (up to 1 million, I suppose)
- millones y millones (millions and millions)
- tropecientosmil millones (many hundred thousand millions).
- From here, you just change "millones" (millions) for billones, trillones, or whatever.
- I also like to say "dos, o tres... cientos", "two, or three... hundreds" which is a number much higher than expected (expected 2-3, but real number is between 2 and 300). But this is a joke, I suppose it's not standard Spanish.
- EDIT2: there's also "chorrocientas" or "chorrecientas" which is several hundreds, same as "tropecientas"
In English, I know "a handful", "zillion" and "gazillion" but I don't know any other. Do they exist? What about in other languages?
There is a very nice tale from Gianni Rodari, "A inventare i numeri", I've read it (in Spanish) with my son several times, he doesn't like it very much (maybe it's early for him) but I like it a lot.
Octavio Alvarez, Luis A. Guzman, hermesgabriel, Adrián Perales and 1 others likes this.
Luis A. Guzman shared this.
In English, "several" would be the other main one.
You also have phrases like a "bunch", but that doesn't refer to any kind of fixed number range... I think what qualifies as a "bunch" would vary wildly based on the context...
"Several","Bunch"...? boooo! Don't you have funny invented numbers lower than zillion? :)
I found the Wikipedia page Indefinite and fictitious numbers which is quite interesting!!
Laura Arjona Reina at 2015-07-25T17:12:30Z
Sarah Elkins, jrobb likes this.
in english also
"a couple" (2, sometimes more in the south. <5)
"a few" (3-10?)
"several" (same as a few?)
"bunches" (>10?)
"lots" (>10)
"oodles" ..this is very uncommon. (>10)
Mostly not specifically tied to any number range.
plus the others like:
"hundreds"
"thousands"
"millions"
but those are just actual numbers of things.