>Even this cat thingie was something that I just pulled out of the blue when I saw this board.

obviously, yes.

>Anyway I just wanted to test this theory

you failed.
"testing" such a "theory" by collecting a few variations of one deliberatly picked phrase on the internet will result in failure.

>She said that I should be counting in English than Malay to count faster (she learnt math in school in English while during my time we changed it to Malay already)

No, you shouldn't. You should be counting in your primary language, because, neurologically speaking, the use of your primary language for counting means less effort and less operations that need to be serialized.