If I've Said It Once, I've Said It a Thousand Times

Though this is the first time I'm saying it in this context.

Howdy! It’s Joey with Fun Fact Friyay. Today’s fact is a grand ol’ time.

Photo by Hermann Wittekopf - kmkb on Unsplash

No number before 1,000 has the letter “A” in it.

Yesterday, I introduced the comedian Gary Gulman’s delightful monologue on how U.S. states got their name to my parents.

Like Gulman, I also enjoy a good dive into wordplay. Sometimes, that wordplay is simply looking at a group of words and realizing a unique element about said group.

For instance, Maine is the only state with one syllable. That delights me so much that I explored several other Maine fun facts.

Today, however, we’re looking at numbers. There are at least a bajillion of them, and that’s a scientific figure. In English, you’re going to be counting quite a bit before you get to a number with an “A” in it.

Sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and you’ll be crooning without saying an “A” in any of your numbers (though you will be annoying everyone around you, because that song is very long).

You can even multiply that song by 10 (or 10.09) and you still wouldn’t reach an “A.” From zero all the way to 999, the first letter of the alphabet is nowhere to be found.

Sure, some folks are pedantic and would say something like “eight hundred AND sixty-three.” But that’s not technically accurate. If you encounter someone saying that, feel free to point that out to them. People love being corrected.

Granted, this fact becomes less impressive in other languages. In Spanish, you can say “uno, dos, tres” without an “A,” but it all falls apart when you hit “cuatro”—or “catorce,” if you’re Bono from U2.

You can get twice as far in German, where you’ll say “aagh” when you reach “acht.” In Czech, you hit “nula” (zero) before you even get going!

The next time you find yourself looking off into the distance with a thousand-yard stare, give yourself an “A” for effort.