Denmark: Seven and half fifth twenteis
99What?
Edit: my research says that half-fifth is how they call 4.5, which is insane. Then they multiply that by 20, holy shit, they are mathematical geniuses. So:
7 + 4.5 * 20.
WHAT THE FUCK.
64Yea. Today nobody knows the meaning of the numbers unless they've seen a video about how silly the rest of the world finds it. Now they are just words.
The only remnants of half-somethingth, meaning half away from something, is "halvanden"; half-second meaning 1.5. You might hear "I can totally drive, I've only had half-second beer (the limit is two)", but you will never hear any other number.
26
- 3
Absolutely retarded
-3
Katre-van-deez-nuts
Ha! Je les ai eu!
55Context:
German:
- "siebenundneunzig"
- = "sevenandninety"
English:
- = "ninety-seven"
French:
- "quatre-vingt-dix-sept"
- = "four-twenty-ten-seven"
51It's shit like that why I wonder people just don't update their languages, remove useless letters, nonsensical loan words exonyms, etc.
23LOL, this kind of shit is what happens when people do try to police their language:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_Française
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_québécois_de_la_langue_française
10German did. And it worked. One of the reasons is probably that written German is uniform everywhere. I imagine language reformes are harder and less effective when dialects are still big.
5We all do constantly with each word spoken. Language is updated without rest forever.
4It's not unknown. I'm learning Norwegian and came across the fact that Norway did change in the 1950's. The last straw was six digit phone numbers and confusion caused by the former way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38999668 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2359053_Old_customs_die_hard_The_'new'_way_of_counting_in_Norwegian_is_still_new
1
Not to defend the French but the more correct representation would be 4 * 20 + 10 + 7.
Also if you take this meme to the extreme it would be best to just say “97” which requires a unique word for every number instead of a system to construct them. So I guess there is a balance to be struck in number composition.
33also "ninety" is literally just a shortening of "nine ten", it's not like the french pronounce the whole thing either, i'd wager it usually comes out more like "katvandisett" which isn't much worse than "ninetyseven"
8Actually we do prononce it entirely, at most dropping the first syllable
8Since we use decimal system then nine+ten makes complete sense
2
Can't let this go by without posting this classic:
32"We aren't all Eric Einstein!" 😂
8
4 score and 7 years (+10) ago...
2280 (quatre-vingt) comes from the base 20 system. That's a vestige from pre indo-European languages (specifically the Gauls) that ended up influencing France.
Interestingly (if I'm not mistaken), in Switzerland they actually say "huitante" and in Belgium they say "octante".
20In Wallonia ( french belgium ) you're also likely to hear "nonante" for 90 IIRC
9The Gauls were Celtic, which is Indo-European. Maybe you meant "Pre-Romance"?
4I was mentioning Indo-European in the draft of the comment and then I changed it and I didn't modified it correctly. You are right.
1
And the French get offended if you use the wrong word. I went to a shop there and asked if something was ninety (there is a word for that). The shopkeeper gives me a scathing look and says with emphasis it's four twenty ten.
14Japanese: 9*10+7
9Ninety also means 9*10 since -Ty has its roots in the old Gothic word tigjus which means tens/decades https://www.etymonline.com/word/-ty
That Japanese is also 9*10 is not really surprising since counting in most languages is in base-10
25Same with the German ‘zig’ which is also mentioned in your linked page. It’s also used elsewhere e.g. “zigfach” meaning many times.
4
Growing up bilingual in German and English, can I just say german's "7 + 90" is pretty dumb too.
397 is 300 + 7 + 90: 100s 1s 10s. For bigger numbers you're doing it repeatedly.
In German for every set you're saying the digits and tens in the wrong order. You get used to it, but only if you grow up in Germany (I didn't), else it forever does you head in reading numbers.
7Dutch also has that problem, it causes so many errors.
Old English used to have the same problem ( https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_English/Numbers ), but at one point they must have seen the light, probably some time after they were conquered by the french in 1066. I do remember reading a Charles Dickens story where a person said a number with tens and ones in the reverse order and I wonder when it finally died out completely in English (if it ever did, maybe it's still in use in some dialects).
Edit: thirteen, fourteen, ... There's still commonly used remnants of this reverse order in English, we'll never get rid of this insanity :)
3
🚫🤢fr*nch🤮🚫
7XCVII
5In old French, 127 was 6*20+7.
It's the fact of using base 20.
4Tbf I think in English it's more like... 9*10+7
I'm not a historian or linguist so there is a good chance I'm wrong, but I just kind of always assumed that "ninety" meant "nine-tens" - that the "ty" was an earlier form of, or was corrupted from, "tens".
3from Old English nigontig, from nine + -tig "group of ten"
3
Russian be like:
- ten
- two ten
- three ten
- centipede
- five ten ...
2- centipede
Sounds simular, but no. It was commonly traded abount of sobol(and other animals with fur) skins. Sooo...
- ten
- two ten
- three ten
- furry
- five ten
...
- eight ten
- ninetillhundred
- hundred
And 123456 would be hundred two ten three thousands four hundred five ten six.
Also worth noting that current 10 is десять, while everything more then 10 is using older дцать.
3
Swiss french use the 80s and 90s terms like in english
1For reference, 97 in French is " Quatre Van Dix Neuf"
-3Quatre-vingt dix-sept*
7I love that for reference you got spelling and meaning wrong.
4Then you have the superior, Swiss /Belgian way: 90+7, "nonante-sept"
2I think that's actually 99
2NINE NINE
1
20x4 + 10 + 7 appears stupid at first but is really the better approach. It teaches 100% of the speakers basic arithmetic by literally embedding it in the language and makes it easy to visualize fairly large numbers. Try imagining 97 of something in your head vs 20x4 + 10 + 7 of the same something.
-19Huh?
21You know what else teaches basic arithmetics? elementary school. And numbers are taught alongside the arithmetics to calculate with them.
So you first learn addition and substraction of single digit numbers, then it goes to double digit numbers, then you learn the multiplication tables and through that divisions. Then you move on to larger numbers, written additions, subtractions, multiplication and division with remainder.
So by the time a child learns the number 80 it also learns how to do arithmetics in that area.
6wait until you realize that "two hundred and fifty seven" means 2×100 + 5×10 + 7 of something and you have to imagine that every time you say 257 of something
how is it that the word "ninety seven" (9×10 + 7) doesn't count as embedding arithmetic into the language?
1
