Imagine how hard math would be to discuss if the length of a number’s name was equal to the number itself. For example, this might be how you would say 1,000:
That number you get when you take one, and then add another one, and then one more to it and you keep doing that a whole bunch of times while keeping track on, say, an abacus or by getting a big pile of peas, dried preferably because wet peas can be slippery and you might end up squirting one out from your fingers accidentally so it flies across the room and then you have to stand up and look for it because you don’t want to leave a pea sitting on the floor somewhere where you might step on it and mash it into your carpet, which can be hard to clean, especially when the pea mash dries into the fibers, so, anyway, you have a big pile, or maybe a bowl because you would be much less likely to inadvertently mess it up, of dried peas that you then move to another pile, or bowl if you’re using the bowl technique, which I strongly recommend that you do, one by one repeatedly until, your arms aching and your eyes burning, you have one more than nine hundred ninety nine peas in the second bowl.