Lee.org

Chisanbop – A Korean Finger Counting Method

I remember when I was about 8 years old I saw a TV show showing a finger counting method that captured my attention. I only saw the show once and didn’t remember all the details but it just seemed so useful to be able to use my fingers to count to numbers higher than 10!

Heck, I remember the room I was in when watching the video better than the video itself.

What I gleaned from the program is to use my left hand fingers as 1’s, my left thumb as 5, my right hand fingers as 10’s and my right thumb as 50. That’s all. That simple technique lets me count to 9 on one hand and 99 on both hands. Turns out, I had the hands backwards from the official Chisanbop method, but that works better for me since I write with my right hand, leaving my left hand to do math. To be honest, the utility really is in being able to count to nine on just my left hand. Anything too much more and I reach for the calculator on my phone.

But back to that video I saw. It was a huge thrill for me to find the full story of that video I saw way back when! For decades I wondered why no one else had heard of this, and why no one I knew used alternate counting methods! It actually got me a little mad at times, where they thought I was the weird one for using an obviously better (if only slightly) way to count.

I actually got a distinct thrill when I found out that Germans count differently than Americans, ala Inglourious Basterds!

Inglourious Basterds counting