Based on an ethnographic study, we explore the potential of experimenting with multiple languages for number words as part of young children's mathematical activity. Data from a preschool classroom activity on number words in 'other' languages exemplify a complex process of discursive identity-work and dialogism amongst children, parents, teachers and researchers. The focus is on the case of little Mariah, a Pakistani immigrant girl in greece, who experiences participation by sharing number knowledge in her mother tongue Urdu, and highlights how gendered, racial or language-related discourses weave her learner identity in a multilingual preschool classroom.