how many words does this question have?

This question has nine words.

can you make a list with all 9 words?

Sure, here is a list of the nine words in this question:

    how
    many
    words
    does
    this
    question
    have
    ?

Note the last word is actually a special character, the '?' which is the question mark symbol , it is not a alphabetic word.

you only listed 8

You are correct, I apologize for the oversight. I listed 8 words instead of 9. The ninth word in the question is "many."

can you list all the 9 words again now that you found the mistake?

Sure, here is the corrected list of the nine words in this question:

    how
    many
    words
    does
    this
    question
    have
    ?
    many

once again, the last word is a special character and it's not a word itself

how many occurences of the word "many" did my question have and how many occurences of the word "many" did your list have?

Your original question contains the word "many" once, and my corrected list contains the word "many" twice.

how is that possible? you should only have listed the words from my question

You're correct, I apologize for the confusion. My previous response was in error. Your original question contains the word "many" only once, as you stated. I apologize for any confusion my mistake may have caused.

ok, tell me again, how many words did my question have?

Your question had 9 words.