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A Russian colleague of mine recently told me that English is the only language that actively distinguishes between fingers and thumbs by having a completely separate word. Her phrasing of it was "English is the only language where you have 8 fingers, in all others there are 10!".

This surprises me. I'm sure that there must be at least one other language out there that does distinguish between them. I did a quick Google to find out if this was true, but the results were inconclusive. Some results supported the conclusion, others went as far as saying that there is even a Russian word for "thumb", but didn't actually specify what that word was. A possibility that I find plausible is that a lot of languages do have such a word, but its use is not very frequent or the word is archaic.

So, do other languages have 8 fingers too, or are we just strange?

tchrist
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Polynomial
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  • Could the downvoter please explain the NARQ close vote? This is clearly a well-defined question, albeit not strictly within the realms of English language. This is the closest SE site that the question would fit into. – Polynomial Jun 08 '12 at 12:41
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    I think this is Not A Real Question. "five fingers on each hand" is actually more common than five digits.... I'm sure most languages have a word distinguishing the thumb from the other digits. It just so happens English doesn't really have a word exclusively reserved for "non-thumb" digits. – FumbleFingers Jun 08 '12 at 12:43
  • @FumbleFingers You may be sure, but I am not. That's why I asked the question. Without evidence, there's no answer. – Polynomial Jun 08 '12 at 12:46
  • I only voted to close - I didn't downvote the question. I specified NARQ, but I could have gone for Off Topic, as I think this Q is about culturally-governed perceptions rather than English Language as such. – FumbleFingers Jun 08 '12 at 12:49
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    Spanish has a thumb but not toes. Rather, the word for thumb is pulgar, which is related to pulgada, an inch. Fingers are dedos and toes are also dedos, just dedos del pie. One’s “fingers and toes” are therefore los dedos de manos y pies. And the would-be thumb on your foot in English is called your great toe, or big toe. – tchrist Jun 08 '12 at 12:50
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    I've no doubt french doigt is etymologically related to digit, and I can't believe a French person would find anything odd about "cinq doigts à chaque main". They have pouce for "thumb", but so far as I know there's no French word exclusively reserved for "non-thumb digits". If this is a meaningful question at all, it's comparative linguistics - outside the scope of ELU. – FumbleFingers Jun 08 '12 at 12:57
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    A thumb is not a finger in English? That would be crazy (or a common children's joke). "Joke: How many fingers do you have on a hand? 4 cuz one's a thumb." It's a joke because it is not true, it's a play on words where the hypernym (finger) can feel sometimes like the 'not otherwise specified' category of all the hyponyms. – Mitch Jun 08 '12 at 13:10
  • @Mitch I think that she was referencing the (now proven false) idea that other languages don't distinguish between fingers and thumbs. – Polynomial Jun 08 '12 at 13:12
  • @Polynomial: Are you looking for evidence that native speakers use the word "finger" to mean any of the digits on your hand? Because a web search would clear that up for you. – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Jun 08 '12 at 13:27
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    Are you asking about English or about some other language? If it is about some other language then that is off-topic here (and one of the main reasons it was closed). – Mitch Jun 08 '12 at 13:37
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    "A Russian colleague" Most likely he's mistaken. Because there are many languages, it is very unlikely that only one of them names "thumb" differently compared to other fingers. – SigTerm Jun 08 '12 at 14:37
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    @SigTerm: I would hazard a guess that almost all languages have a distinct word uniquely identifying "thumb" as opposed to the other four fingers on a hand. The issue is whether the converse applies. OP seems to assume "finger" doesn't include "thumb", but that's not true of English or French, where one can equally speak of a normal human having 8 or 10 fingers/doigts, depending on how you look at things. – FumbleFingers Jun 08 '12 at 15:10
  • Thumbs are still considered fingers. If you told someone -- in English -- "I have eight fingers", they would understand you to mean that two of your fingers had been cut off or you had a birth defect or some such. English has names for all the fingers: thumb, index finger or forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, and pinky. – Jay Jun 08 '12 at 15:51
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    If only we DID exclude the thumbs when counting our fingers, today we might count in base 8 rather than base 10, which would make conversion to binary and therefore working with computers so much easier! – Jay Jun 08 '12 at 15:51
  • @FumbleFingers "I would hazard a guess that almost all languages have a distinct word uniquely identifying 'thumb' as opposed to the other four fingers on a hand." Many of the Slavic languages just call it the "big finger", which is where I'm guessing this whole (off-topic) question came from. – Mark Beadles Jun 08 '12 at 22:12
  • @Mark Beadles: I don't know any Slavic languages, but I asked Google to translate thumb and finger. Of about a dozen available languages I suppose might be Slavic, all except Bulgarian produce what look to me like quite different words. OP says a Russian colleague claims they are the same word in that language, but Google translated my string as большим и указательным пальцем. To me, that strongly implies thumbs and fingers are differentiated in Russian. Which would be my default assumption for all languages, though I accept there will be exceptions. – FumbleFingers Jun 09 '12 at 01:50
  • @Fumblefingers You're in luck, I do speak a few Slavic languages :) Contra your assumption, your string literally means "with the big and pointer fingers" using the word пальцем to mean both thumb and finger. It's interesting how divisions that we regard as fundamental can be quite different in other languages. Color words are another great example. – Mark Beadles Jun 09 '12 at 02:33
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    @Mark: oic. You mean it's like with toes in English, where everyone uniquely identifies one of them as great toe or big toe. We know that one's different enough to be singled out somehow, and it's not even opposable. The fact that our way of singling out digits just recombines existing words doesn't really mean much though. For example, English, French, and German don't have a "dedicated" word for grandfather - just a combination of two existing elements. – FumbleFingers Jun 09 '12 at 11:28
  • @FumbleFingers: "I would hazard a guess that almost all languages have a distinct word uniquely identifying "thumb"" Well, Russian does not have it, so you're mistaken. "Big finger"(большой палец) is used for the thumb, but there's no distinct single word for it. There's distinct word for the "pinky finger"("мизинец"), though. The rest of fingers go like this - "index finger" is "pointing finger", "middle finger" is "middle finger", "ring finger" is "unnamed finger". "but Google" Also, don't use google translate for arguments. – SigTerm Jun 11 '12 at 14:03
  • @SigTerm: I did say "almost all". Obviously I realise there's no unique "word" for thumb in Russian, since OP points that out in the question. I don't want to get bogged down in an argument about what exactly consitutes a "word", but I'll just point out again that by some definitions English/French/German don't have a word for "father's father" - grandfather, grand-père, etc. are just conjunctions of existing words. They're just a bit more conjoined than "big toe", for example. – FumbleFingers Jun 11 '12 at 14:11

2 Answers2

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Apparently the Spanish think the English are strange about this: see here.

Spanish has a thumb but not toes. Rather, the Spanish word for thumb is pulgar, which is related to pulgada, an inch. Fingers are dedos and toes are also dedos, just dedos del pie. One’s “fingers and toes” are therefore los dedos de manos y pies.

And the would-be thumb on your foot in English is called your great toe, or big toe.

tchrist
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The French for 'finger' is doigt. The French for 'thumb' is pouce.

Barrie England
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  • Is it common, in the French language, to refer to thumbs as doigt instead of pouce? – Polynomial Jun 08 '12 at 12:50
  • I'm not sure. There are native French speakers among us, who may be able to say. – Barrie England Jun 08 '12 at 12:52
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    @Polynomial: Per my comment against the question, doigt in French works the same as finger and digit in English. It can include thumbs or not, depending primarily on whether the context specifically identifies thumb/pouce separately. Although in English, digit always includes thumbs, so doigt is more like finger in that it can either include or not. – FumbleFingers Jun 08 '12 at 13:01
  • The German for 'finger' is Finger. The German for 'thumb' is Daumen. But really, just check the Wiktionary entries for finger and thumb and be done. – RegDwigнt Jun 08 '12 at 13:35
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    How does this even answer the (off-topic) question? – Robusto Jun 08 '12 at 13:37
  • @Robusto: Barrie addresses the question by pointing out that the French have words equivalent to English finger and thumb - which I've amplified by saying that (so far as I know) doigt works like finger in that it can either include thumbs or not. Thus, "J'ai deux pouces et huit doigts" and "...dix doigts" are both unexceptional in French, as in the corresponding English. OP's concept of 8 or ten fingers is thus at the very least a "fuzzy" distinction in both of the languages I happen to know, and probably it's the same in many others. – FumbleFingers Jun 08 '12 at 15:04
  • @Robusto It does answer my question, as FumbleFingers points out, which is why I accepted it. – Polynomial Jun 08 '12 at 15:53
  • FWIW, Italian has 'pollice' for 'thumb' and Spanish has 'pulgar', as well as words for 'finger'. I can't comment on usage. – Barrie England Jun 08 '12 at 16:15
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    Barrie, I apologize. I don't know what I was using for brains this morning. Suffice to say I had a brain cramp. Blame it on lack of sleep, if you want to be kind. I can't undo my downvote at this, but I will catch you later. – Robusto Jun 08 '12 at 17:29
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    @Robusto: As some people say, no worries. – Barrie England Jun 08 '12 at 18:43
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    I edited the answer transparently and lo I can undo the downvote. A tip of the keyboard to @Jasper for the protip. – Robusto Jun 09 '12 at 13:00