How to say “five” in 49 languages
Every one of these is a word that turns up in ordinary speech, not a dictionary curiosity — the number beside it is where it ranks in that language.
It is commonest in Korean, where 오 is the 59th most used word.
- Afrikaans vyf #480
- Albanian pesë #334
- Arabic خمسة #312
- Armenian հինգ #1,662
- Basque bost #189
- Bengali পাঁচ #429
- Bosnian pet #348
- Bulgarian пет #410
- Catalan cinc #351
- Chinese 五百 five hundred #2,420
- Croatian pet #368
- Czech pět #435
- Danish fem #297
- Dutch vijf #365
- Esperanto kvin #318
- Estonian viis #309
- Finnish viisi #412
- French cinq #494
- Galician cinco #321
- German fünf #484
- Greek ε The number five in Greek numerals #210
- Hebrew חמישה #812
- Hindi पाँच #1,075
- Hungarian öt #398
- Icelandic fimm #183
- Indonesian lima #429
- Italian cinque #501
- Korean 오 #59
- Latvian pieci #662
- Lithuanian penki #583
- Macedonian пет #334
- Malay lima #389
- Malayalam അഞ്ച് #242
- Norwegian fem #284
- Persian پنج #338
- Polish pięć #564
- Portuguese cinco #389
- Romanian cinci #421
- Russian пять #466
- Serbian pet #359
- Slovak päť #368
- Slovenian pet #216
- Spanish cinco #373
- Swedish fem #306
- Tagalog lima #1,063
- Tamil ஐந்து #146
- Turkish beş #299
- Urdu پانچ #201
- Vietnamese năm #168
Knowing the word is the easy half.
Using it with someone who speaks the language is the half that sticks.