And get this: Even though no number before 1,000 contains the letter a, plenty contain the uncommon letter x. When writing one to 999, you’d use x more than 200 times, thanks to six, 16 and 60.

It goes without saying that memorising the 1,000 most common words in Lingala, French or Chinese is not going to make anyone a fluent speaker. That would have been an unrealistic goal.