• SmoothOperator@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      229
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It’s base 20 like in France, plus the quirk that we have an ordinal numeral way of saying half integers, i.e. 1.5 is “half second”, 2.5 is “half third”, 4.5 is “half fifth”. So 92 is said as “two and half fifth times twenty”. We’ve since made the “times twenty” implicit for maximum confusion, so it’s just said as “two and half fifths”.

      Also, the ordinal numeral system for halves is only really used for 1.5 these days, so the numbers don’t really make sense to anyone. When speaking to other Scandinavians, we often just say “nine ten two”.

      Why don’t we just change it to the more sensible system then? Because language is stubborn.

      • sturlabragason@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        100
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Now imagine moving there as a foreigner from a normal country and someone telling you their phone number! It’s like having a micro stroke.

      • federalreverse-old@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        39
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        1.5 is “half second”, 2.5 is “half third”, 4.5 is “half fifth”

        Interesting. Regionally, some Germans measure time like this, i.e. “half two” is 01:30 resp. 13:30. (Which is different from English, where people who say “half two” mean “half past two”.)

        We’ve since made the “times twenty” implicit for maximum confusion, so it’s just said as “two and half fifths”.

        I know very little about Danish, but I learned that Danes slur the middle of most words. So I suspect you actually pronounce even less of the word than you’d write…?

        Because language is stubborn.

        Belgian French gives me hope.

        [Edited: Usage is not regional]

        • lugal@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          16
          ·
          1 year ago

          Regionally, some Germans measure time like this, i.e. “half two” is 01:30 resp. 13:30.

          This isn’t regional nor “some”, I never met a German wo doesn’t. Sure, there is “13 o’clock 30” and both are valid but I’d say the default is still the half system.

          When it comes to quarters, there are regional differences and it’s a common “ice breaker” or small talk topic when people from all over Germany come together.

        • bstix@feddit.dk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s pronounced “toh-år-hal-fems”.

          That’s 3 syllables, because the first two are glissando, but even the most rural person needs some consonants between the rest to make any sense.

        • SmoothOperator@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          When we say “half two” we also mean 13:30. It’s a pain when in Britain.

          And yeah, I guess in pronouncing you’d say 92 as “to’å’l’fems” rather than “to-og-halv-fems”.

        • sqw@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’ve run into Americans for whom “half two” means 13:30. I like it but it confuses everyone.

      • Zron@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        30
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        So the Danish can do this bullshit with everyday numbers and it’s cool because language , but I mention that it’s 70 degrees outside and everyone starts arguing about metric?

        Everything is arbitrary, I’m gonna go build a dresser in multiples of rabbit foot while you all figure something out.

        • DepressedCoconut@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          21
          ·
          1 year ago

          Danish people are environmentally damaged by the flatness of their country and the rest of Scandinavia pitty them. We will take care of this. We will teach them how to speak. Soonish.

        • Drigo@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          When we talk with other people in fx English we use their numbering system, and not our own

        • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Temperature in fahrenheit is just as arbitrary as celsius. Fahrenheit makes sense from the perspective of human experience while celsius is very relevant to water. It’s really handy if you live in a area with snowy winters. Celsius is standard all around the world, while Fahrenheit is used in a handful of places.

      • champagne_laugh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        1 year ago

        And to confuse even further, the cardinal number (ninety-two) is “to-og-halv-fems” in Danish without the *20. But if you need the ordinal number (92nd), then we add in the x20 as in “to-og-halv-fem-sinds-tyvende”. Danish is very easy and transparent 😊

        • Kale@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          For what it’s worth, the US doesn’t use imperial anymore. It’s “US Customary Units”. It’s mostly a mix of metric and units based on metric. The US uses volts, amps, watts, and seconds which are metric. The inch, by definition, is 25.4mm. I’m not sure how the US gallon (less volume than the Imperial gallon) is defined. Food content is given in calories and grams.

          I’m also not sure how temperature is defined. Originally, temperature units were set so that fresh water boiled exactly 180 degrees above it’s freezing temperature. To avoid negative numbers, zero Fahrenheit was set to the freezing temperature of sea ice.

      • joneskind@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I have to admit, as a French myself I found relief in that discovery. And thank you very much for the explanation.

        I was confused by the “2 and” at first, then I realize you put the smallest part of the whole number first. It makes perfectly sense if you count in base 20.

        We also have an habit to count in base 12 and half 12 in France. Like “half a dozen” (6) or “one dozen and half” (18), but only for multiple of 6.

        I will now say “quatre vingtaine et demie” instead of “quatre-vingt-dix” just to tease my fellow Belgians (who say “nonante” and “septante” instead of “soixante-dix” et “quatre-vingt-dix”)

        EDIT: As a matter of fact, I will rather say “trois et demi-cinquième vingt” for 73 because it sounds better. Now I see it.

        If I am correct, the 3rd 20 is everything between 60 and 79. The half-3rd 20 is everything between 70 and 79. So 7 and half-2nd 20 would be 37?

        How would you say 40, 60 and 80 then ? 2nd 20, 3rd 20 and 4th 20?

        • Serdan@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          The weird numbers only start at 50.

          60: tre sinde tyve ( three times twenty).
          80: fire sinde tyve ( four times twenty)

        • SmoothOperator@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Indeed, fyrre (40) is also clearly related to four (or fourth), it only kicks in at 50.

          You can recognize the numbers where this system is in place by the ‘s’ at the end, which is a remnant of the “-sindstyve” ending meaning “times twenty”.

          If it worked for 30 and 40 they would be “halvandens” and “andens”.

      • MartinXYZ@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’ve always found the Danish numbers intriguing. I understand the whole “halvfem-sinds-tyve”- thing and the other ones of similar origin but I can’t wrap my head around “elleve” and “tolv”. Do you remember the origin of those?

        • SmoothOperator@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          1 year ago

          Not really, but they’re essentially the same as the German “elf” and “zwölf”, so we probably got them from the same place as them ;)

          • vidarh@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Wiktionary suggests the common proto-Germanic root of eleven/twelve, elf/zwölf are likely to have been "ainalif" and "twalif" - "one left over" and "two left over".

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      39
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago
      # 🇩🇰
      1 en
      2 to
      3 tre
      4 fire
      5 fem
      6 seks
      7 syv
      8 otte
      9 ni
      10 ti
      11 elleve
      12 tolv
      13 tretten
      14 fjorten
      15 femten
      16 seksten
      17 sytten
      18 atten
      19 nitten
      20 tyve
      21 enogtyve
      22 toogtyve
      30 tredive
      40 fyrre
      50 halvtreds
      60 tres (threes)
      70 halvfjerds (½fourths)
      80 firs (fours)
      90 halvfems (½fifths)
      92 tooghalvfems (twoand½fifths)
      100 hundred

      In Czech, we say „čtvrt na osm“ (quarter to eight), „půl osmé“ (half of eighth) and „tři čtvrtě na osm“ (¾ to eight) to mean 19:15, 19:30 and 19:45, respectively, so I kinda get it.
      Similarly, in German, 🕢=„halb acht“.

      • Bruno@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        TIL that it not French with the weirdest way to count. I still don’t really get the Danish way. Even with your explanation.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s not really an explanation, just a table where I leave the linguistically inclined to figure it out. The point is, the “s” at the end is short for “×20” and “half fifth” is short for ●●●●◖ = 4½ (four and half of the fifth).

            • abecede@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Maybe the Danish don’t just count with their fingers to 10, but include their toes… So 10 fingers + 10 toes = 20?

              • vidarh@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                "Four score and seven years ago"‍ from the Gettysburg Address… Many languages have or had words for counting in 20's. They've just mostly gone out of fashion.

      • thelastknowngod@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Funny enough, I grew up saying “quarter of eight” to mean 19:45. It took until my mid-20s to realize its probably a regional thing because, after I left Philadelphia (my home city) and moved to Chicago, everyone thought I meant 20:15.

        • Vacationlandgirl@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Oh! In New England “quarter of” is 15 minutes before the hour (19:45) and “quarter after” is 15 minutes after the hour (20:15). That might explain why my colleagues in Alabama were surprised when I left a meeting at 9:45 when I had clearly warned them I had a hard stop at quarter of ten!

          Interesting distinction none of us picked up on!

      • Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Thats pretty common in terms of time. I’m not going to say something is “half five” to say it coststwo and a half dollars though. I understand that with French and Danish you arent actually doing the math and just think of that string the same way i think of “ninety two” but it’s still difficult to wrap my head around.

        • Bumblefumble@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          Just to make something clear, in this system, which isn’t really used, half five would be 4.5, not 2.5.

    • PM_ME_FEET_PICS@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      48
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      English is 90 + 2. Ninety is its own distinct word.

      French is similar to English (base ten) but after 60 it gets weird and then at 80 switches to base 20 until 99.

      70 in French is 60 + 10 80 and above in French is 4 × 20 + what ever number is needed to get there.

        • wkk@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          102 is “hundred-two” so it’s only weird for 70 “sixty-ten”, 80 “four-twenty” and 90 “four-twenty-ten”…

          But the way I learned it each was like it’s own word, even if it’s not. Just don’t think about it too much!

            • zerofk@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              1 year ago

              They do, but they’re only used in some regions. Septante, huitante, nonante.

                • zerofk@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I honestly don’t know the history. I just know that Belgian French uses septante and nonante, Swiss French uses huitante as well. I think it’s more comparable to the vocabulary differences between for example American and British English.

        • Firipu@startrek.website
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Nobody says huitante in Belgium.

          It's 60, 70, 4*20, 90.

          edit: Downvote all you want. If you say huitante in Belgium, everyone will know you're not from Belgium.

          Belgians say Soixante, Septante, Quatre-vingt, Nonante. Even in the dutch language part, that's how they learn french.

          If you say Soixante-dix or Quatre-vingt-dix, everyone will know you're french and not Belgian. Pretty simple…

  • Tarte@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    58
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I love this topic, keep the comments going! It gets even wilder/weirder when reading historical German monastary documents from the early modern period that sometimes mixed German numerical grammar with latin letters and abbreviations. For example this was a common way to write prices in the early 17th century in my region of study:

    xiv C Lviұ f xxv bb iy d

    All of this was in early modern German Kurrent (old cursive), of course, and with not always obvious whitespaces inbetween. The letters v and x looked somewhat similar, too, and you better don’t miss the small strikethroughs anywhere in the lower or upper end of a letter which indicated “minus half” (except for the letter capital C which always has it). This is the kind of fun that brings me joy during my day while simultaneously providing the content for nightmares at night.

    For some closure:
    The short example would read as: (10+(5-1))*100 + 50+((5+3)-0.5) florin, 10+10+5 batzen, and 1+1+1 denari.
    And that would translate to a price of 1457 ½ florin (guilders), 25 batzen (silver coin) and 3 denari (pennies).

    • weker01@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      Am I correct in thinking that this would be a relatively enormous amount of money for a normal person in that time?

      • Tarte@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Yes, absolutely! My work is related to monasteries. Some of these institutions were large economical organisations with hundreds or thousands of affiliated workers (in addition to the few dozens of actual clergy) stretching hundreds of villages/cities. Monastaries basically were the major corporations of the time. They did handle these amounts of money regularly.

        Historical purchasing power for anything before the industrial revolution is hard to approximate. On the one hand because wages were not only payed in money, on the other hand because labor was very cheap and material cost was high - the inverse of today. To illustrate: They did lots of recycling work that would seem fanatical to us today, e.g. straightening old nails, reusing stones and wood from deconstructions, or even excavating and resharpening rotten fenceposts. To add some general and very rough perspective: An unskilled worker/day-worker could expect a yearly wage in the order of magnitude of about 5 fl (guilders) per year for very hard work and long working hours for 6 or 7 days a week (payed daily in non-face-value coins like pennies). However, it was common for wages to include living accomodation and/or food staples (that included wine or beer) - or pay out the worth of these things, separately. A pair of shoes was a valued gift one could give to an unskilled worker on special occasions.

        It was a different time with different societal and economical systems in place. Estimated simplifications you might read online (e.g. 1 fl = 50€) are therefor to be taken with a buttload of salt - to the point one might call it a misrepresentation. Then there were the multiple events with increased silver and gold imports from the new world (combined with some greedy/desperate lords reducing the silver share of their coins). This led to multiple changes in the exchange rates between various regional gold, silver and non-face-value coins of the same names, complicating thing even more.

        To solve these issues, the prices I named above would be in fictional coins of account, not actual physical coins that were payed. People had to do quite some math when doing accounting - and yes, minor errors happened all the time.

        • weker01@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          This sounds fascinating. I was always fascinated how complicated life could be in days past. Like how we take decimalization for granted today or the cheap conversion of money and the enormous availability of modern currency (i.e. Paper money and coins).

          I once read about coin shortages and how that could impact an entire region. Fascinating stuff.

          Do you happen to have book recommendations on the topic of coins or economic history of Europe (or even more specifically the German speaking area)?

          • Tarte@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            If you happen to speak German I’d recommend “Das Geld der Deutschen” by Bernd Sprenger for an overview as he touches a lot of eras and different subtopics, starting from antiquity and ending with the Euro. Alternatively, “Kleine Geschichte des Geldes” by Michael North is another popular (and a little newer) survey book that I enjoyed. The most insightful parts for me were the in-depth explanations of the concept of bill of exchanges and cashless payments in general during the early modern period.

            Since my focus is on monastaries and money is only one aspect, I did not research this sub topic comprehensively, even if it interests me personally - hence I conveniently didn’t search much further than mostly German literature. I just checked: The only “English book” on the topic from my bibliography is the conference proceedings “Münzprägung, Geldumlauf und Wechselkurse” / “Minting, Monetary Circulation and Exchange Rates” (Trier Historische Forschungen, volume 7) from 1984. It is a little older but was still worthwhile to me, quite recently. Despite the name it only includes a few German but mostly English essays. They are not limited geographically to the German lands. As a small word of caution: Some of the essays are rather theoretical by nature, so this might not be the very best entry point if you want an overview, or you could simply skip these essays.

            I do not love to recommend it here, but asking the English collegues on reddit via /r/AskHistorians might give you a much better answer if you’re looking for good entry-level English literature on the topic. They also provide a list of recommended books that features a small “Political and Economic History” section. They included a book by Joseph Gies and Frances Gies that looks quite promising (but focuses on the time 1000-1500). Other than that I cannot find anything particularly relevant in that list. Asking over there might be worthwhile, though.

            • weker01@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I am actually German so thank you for all the recommendations! I will check out some of the books (even though I know it will take me some time to get to them. I have a rather long reading list, but I will check them out!)

      • It’s a pretty enormous amount of money now. I was thinking that a gold coin was 1oz which would have been an insane amount of money but some research has told me that guilder can refer to several different coins that are between .08oz and .11oz of gold mixed with other precious metals. Ignoring the other precious metals and assuming the lowest gold content 1457.5 guilders is a bit over 116 oz of gold. Gold is approx. $1900/oz so in gold alone that is over $220,000.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Man and here I thought the English system was kinda screwy, where at first it’s in base 12 and base 20 at the same time what with having special unique names for all digits up to twelve, and then thirteen through nineteen are also uniquely weird, then at twenty we decide “man fuck that” and then it’s in base 10 until we repeat that pattern every 100, ie “one hundred seventeen.” Or then we occasionally do stupid things like “seventeen hundred” instead of “one thousand seven hundred.”

    It just now hit me that “teenager” is an inherently English construct because that weird partial second decade we have. I’m curious, how does that work in languages? Like, in French they have special words up to 16 and only do “ten-seven, ten-eight, ten-nine.” You spend seven years as a teenager in England but only three in France.

    • Aqarius@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      1 year ago

      Germanic languages share this. German has neun, zehn, elf, zwölf, dreizehn, vierzehn…

      • Serisar@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        But continues after that. Apart from 11 and 12 the german system is consistent within itself, even if the system itself is kinda weird, English less so.

        Edit: What i meant is the difference between ten/teen, whereas German uses zehn (“ten”) to build the “compount numbers”. There is also thir-teen as opposed to three-ten, which isn’t quite what eleven and twelve are, but it’s also not the same as the numbers following it. But others have pointed out that these are pretty marginal differences and i would agree.

        • homoludens@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          We say dreizehn (three-ten) but dreiundzwanzig (three-and-twenty), so it’s not consistent for the same range of numbers as English. But it’s a bit more consistent because at least we don’t make up new words for 13-19 (“thir”, “teen”).

        • garden_boi@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Literally every single point listed by @captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works applies 100% identically to German. Could you explain how English is less consistent than German?

          • Wilzax@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Literally only because of “teen/ten” difference. Everything else matches up, except that the roles of the cardinal stem (three) and the ordinal stem (thir) are swapped in 13 and 30 for German

            Three, thirteen, thirty, third vs Drei, Dreizehn, Dreißig, Dritte

            Used 3 as an example because it’s the most irregular out of the 9 non-zero digits in German

          • Naeron@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            1 year ago

            English has four-teen fif-teen etc. up until twenty and from that point forward has the decade in front of the single number twenty-one. In contrast to German which at least Always has the single digit in front of the decade

            • thekidxp@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              To be fair English has a lot of German. The “teen” sound almost certainly comes from the sound “zehn”. It’s pretty easy to hear how fünfzehn und sechszehn eventually become fifteen and sixteen. We’re more or less saying five ten just kinda mushed together.

              • samus12345@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                More accurately, modern English and German come from the same root. A Proto-Germanic word for 15 developed into “fünfzehn” in German and “fifteen” in English.

            • garden_boi@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              🤯 Didn’t notice that one! Yes, that’s indeed more irregular in English!

    • theinspectorst@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s fascinating how our number systems even evolved. They’ve done studies with remote Amazon tribespeople where they show them a number of dots and ask them how many there are, and found that their words for what we thought were their numbers 1-5 actually translate to more like 1, 2, 3, ‘4-ish’ and ‘many’. Interestingly when they’ve done the same with very young children then they’ve got similar results.

      Counting is something that only took off when large-scale civilisations (and the need to pay taxes!) took off - before this there was never really a need to be specific when counting a quantity of more than about 4 or 5. Maths developed as an offshoot of language rather than something distinct and so our counting systems suffer from the quirks that come with this.

    • RandomVideos@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      In my language(Romanian), the numbers between 11 and 19 are onetoten,(unsprezece) twototen(doisprezece) … Ninetoten(nouasprezece)

      There are 3 exceptions: for 11 instead of unusprezece(onetoten) its unsprezece(un/o is used when saying that there is only one of something, but unu is used when counting), for 14 instead of patrusprezece(fourtoten) its paisprezece and instead of sasesprezece(sixtoten) its saisprezece

    • ahnesampo@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      In Finnish, the numbers 11–19 are (the number for 1–9) + “toista”, lit. “of the second (ten)”. So 11 is yksitoista, “one of the second (ten)”. That system is only used for 11–19. Bigger than that is tens + number, e.g. 21 kaksikymmentä yksi (two tens and one).

      The Finnish word for “teen” is “teini”, which is a loanword from English. The native word for a person that’s not a child nor an adult is “nuori” lit. “a young”.

      • Rouxibeau@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Japanese is 1 (ichi), 2 (ni), …,10 (juu), 10+1 (juu-ichi), 10+2 (juu-ni), …, 21 (ni-juu-ichi)…, 92 (kyu-juu-ni)…, 100 (hyaku)

        • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, the numbers look all nice and orderly in the abstract until you need to use them for something in the real world…

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      then we occasionally do stupid things like “seventeen hundred” instead of “one thousand seven hundred."

      Both are acceptable, though. Such-and-such hundred is just a little faster to say.

    • PixxlMan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      In Swedish the numbers from 13-19 work similarly. We just add “ton” instead of teen. Teenagers called tonåringar (ton-agers).

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        TIL a little about Swedish.

        I wonder if Swedish and English number words share a history, because I can imagine it started as "three ten" which gets crunched to "thr-t'n" and then properified into "thirteen."

        • vidarh@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          They're both Germanic languages, just like Dutch, German, Norwegian, Danish and a few others. Same origin. All of them have variations of tre/dre/drei/thir/þre/þrēo (say them with sounds halfway between t and d as the first sound, and you'll see how similar they are) followed by variations of ten/teen/tin/tan/ton/tien/zehn as a suffix for ten (again, pick a halfway point between t and z and it's easier to see how similar they are).

          In Old English it was þrēotīene ( þ is "th"), and in Old Norse it was þrettán, same as modern Icelandic, so the first common root is even further back, but you can see the similarity. The *hypothesized proto-Germanic root is þritehun. (þriz + tehun.

          But, it goes back even further than that. The Romance languages (tres, trois etc) shares the same proto-Indo-European root (hypothesized to be tréyes) for three with proto-Germanic.

          The names for numbers are ancient, and though not always recognisable, sometimes recognizable variants pop up even further away than you'd expect. E.g. Pashto (Southeastern Iran) has dre for three, Sanskrit has trí, Indonesian has tri, all of them descendants of the same proto-Indo-European root.

    • Harpsist@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      At 40 I still get confused when people say shit like 12 - hundred and 16. I’m like… Is that 12 groups of 100? Is that a 12 with 000 after?

      1 thousand, 2 hundred and 16.

      But I wasn’t ever a math major or anything.

      Even as I typed it, it made sense. But to throw it into a conversation. Makes me less certain.

      • reattach@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        The more formal way of writing it (one thousand, two hundred and sixteen) is definitely more clear. But if it helps to remember the more colloquial way (twelve hundred): twelve hundred is a 12 followed by 2 zeros, just like one hundred is a 1 followed by 2 zeros.

    • Gamey@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      If that’s crack I really wonder what crazy shit the US and UK take to end with the imperial system!

  • gealb@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    In Hungary we don’t even have a separate name for 11 and 12, just 10 + 1 and 10 + 2. But at least we messed up the billions, it’s called ‘milliárd’ and the trillion is ‘billió’. We were so close to making it perfect.

    • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      But at least we messed up the billions

      No, you folks did it correctly. It’s everyone else who messed up: How big is a billion?

      1 million squared is a billion. 1 million cubed is a trillion. (1 million)^4 is a quadrillion. And so forth with pent-, sex-, sept-, oct-, etc. Milliard, billiard, trilliard, etc. slot in between the powers of one million.

    • shaked_coffee@feddit.it
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Italy joins the club of messing up the billions 🙌

      For us a billion is “un miliardo” and a trillion is “un bilione”

      • Lemmchen@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        38
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think that’s fairly normal in Europe, isn’t it? In Germany we have Million, Milliarde, Billion, Billiarde instead of million, billion, trillion and so on, too.

      • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I might be remembering this incorrectly, but a billion in Europe used to be a million million, and we would count in thousands of millions first, as opposed to a billion now being a thousand million.

        I can’t remember whether a trillion was a million (old) billion, or whether it was a billion billion.

  • Kornblumenratte@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    You missed the traditional Celtic systems.

    Welsh should be both 9 x 10 + 2 and 2 + 10 + 4 * 20.

    And Irish – I didn’t get it, they seem to have a modern 9 x 10 + 2 system, an old vigesimal and one for age?

  • lieuwestra @lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    So what is going on in Walloon and Swiss French? Is it just the Parisian dialect that is messed up?

  • apis@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    Something rotten…

    Seriously, have trouble enough with numbers anyhow. The French system is far more than my little brain can compute, so I pretend to have learned the language from Belgians.

    But who knows, maybe the Danish system would have tipped my infant brain into having a better grasp of some concepts?

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don’t want to be that guy, but In Belgium they speak Flemish (a variant of Dutch) in the North, or French in the South. Which one is it?

      • apis@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Francophone Belgium is mostly in the south east - it is shaded green on the map & the Flemish area is the yellow bit above.