I Tried Counting On My Elbow and Then Oksapmin Schooled Me

By Jenny Birce Category: Linguistic Quirks 13th June 2026

Confession: I used to think counting was purely a neck-and-boredom job-one, two, three, eyes glazed. Then I read about Oksapmin and nearly tripped over my own finger trying to do basic arithmetic on my arm like it was some strange party trick. Turns out, for speakers of Oksapmin, counting is a full-body verb.

Oksapmin is a language from Papua New Guinea whose traditional number system maps numbers onto a fixed sequence of body points. Instead of memorizing abstract numerals past ten, people use about 27 distinct body locations: you start at one extremity, travel up an arm, across the torso and head, and finish on the opposite extremity. Each location corresponds to a specific count. So saying a number is often accompanied by a gesture pointing to the spot where that number lives on the body.

I love that because it makes abstract math feel like choreography. It's also practical: in daily life those body-tallies were handy for trading yams, counting people, telling time in a casual way, or just negotiating whose turn it was to fetch tea. The counts were embodied memory-walk your finger across someone's shoulder and suddenly you have twenty-two apples without needing a sheet of paper.

Linguists have documented this system and noted how it differs from the Indo-European habit of piling digits into teeny symbols. The Oksapmin system ties number to physical experience, which reshapes how you think about quantity. It also shows how culture and cognition gossip: what our languages make easy, our brains lean into.

Full disclosure: I tried to use my elbow as a counting device once at a flea market and the vendor looked at me like I had invented a very specific new kind of nonsense. The Oksapmin system is real, historically rich, and partly at risk as Tok Pisin and English spread, which is the sad part of the story. But I keep picturing someone negotiating prices by tapping the corner of their jaw and honestly, that image will give me math confidence for days.