The English language as it is currently written, has 26 glyphs and maybe 27 if we are prepared to accept that & is a glyph. This leads us to one of the most idiotic sequences that I have ever seen.
Numbers have names. Names are made of letters. The order in which the letters appear in the names of numbers is bonkers strawberry mental.
0 - zero - is the smallest possible number and gives us four letters.
1 - one - only gives us N as a new letter. Since we have already seen the others, we do not need to count them again.
2 - two - we get two new letters, T and W
3 - three - we only get R here
4 - four - F and U are new
5 - five - yields I and V
6 - six - again we're getting S and X
7 - seven - nothing is new. This is in fact the default for the vast majority of rational numbers. A maximum of 27 out of all of the possible numbers is statistically so insignificant as to be practically nil.
8 - eight - G makes an appearance
9 - nine - this is where the story gets a bit sad.
Because we have already seen all of the possible glyphs that we need to make all of the rational numbers, and because numbers represent place value, what we will be doing for most of the time, is just repeating names. It is not until...
20 - twenty - that we see a new letter with Y
From here on out, the journey will get very big very quickly.
100 - one hundred - because we have already named all of the components of placeholders, the only thing left to do is name orders of magnitude. D shows up here.
101 - one hundred and one - as the word "and" isn't really a number, I am not going to include the first letter of the alphabet here... However this is where if you want to include & as a letter because it absolutely is used in writing, then here is your extra bonus.
1000 - one thousand - this is where A finally shows up, and from here, this is where the madness truly begins.
1,000,000 - one million - the suffix "illion" comes from the Italian word millione, which is a 'great thousand'. This is where L arrives, and M shows up because from here on out, we are just adding prefixes to get ever larger numbers.
1,000,000,000 - one billion - because Bi- is the prefix for "two". This is when B shows up.
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - one quadrillion - because Quad- is the prefix for "four". Q and D have arrived at the party.
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - one pentillion - because Pent- is the prefix for "five"; which means that P is here.
Last but not least (because that's literally how ordinal numbers work.
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - one octillion - as Oct- is the prefix for "eight", C is the last one to arrive.
A - 1000
B - 1,000,000,000
C - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
D - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
E - 0
F - 4
G - 8
H - 3
I - 5
L - 1,000,000
M - 1,000,000
N - 7
O - 0
P - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Q - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
R - 4
S - 6
T - 2
U - 4
V - 5
W - 2
X - 6
Y - 20
Z - 0
& - 100
Notably absent are J and K, because unless you are prepared to accept words like Kajillion which is an impossibly big number; just like a Kaiju like Godzilla (a Godzillion is also an impossibly big number) then because we just keep on adding suffixes and prefixed to the end of absurdity - ab surdum, ab infinitum, ad nauseum; amen.
If you want to write out your new ordinal alphabet, then it looks like this:
ZERONTWRFUIVSXGHWYD&AMLBQPC JK
If you want to keep a small child entertained for all of about ten minutes while they start counting and then realise that the task is impossible, then this is a fun exercise. Even the most determined child will be able to count to one octillion before the heat death of the universe or the return of Christ, who also quite frankly has better things to do than count until the appearance of C.
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