In The Language of Numbers: A Journey Through Counting Across the World, Masoud Rezai explores how different languages construct the numbers we use every day—and why those patterns can be surprisingly different.

Why does English say “twenty-four” while German reverses the order? Why does Persian use one pattern in the teens and another after twenty? Why does Mandarin express numbers with such a transparent decimal structure? And why does standard French describe eighty as “four twenties”?

Beginning with a simple comparison of counting from one to one hundred, this book travels across twenty-two languages to examine the fascinating structures hidden inside ordinary number words.

Through accessible explanations and comparative tables, readers discover differences in word order, decimal and twenty-based patterns, language families and historical change, borrowing between cultures, and the relationship between spoken numbers and written notation.

Written for curious readers rather than specialists, The Language of Numbers shows that even the simplest words—one, two, three—carry stories of language, culture, history, and human thought.

Counting may be universal. The ways we speak it are not.

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