[HN Gopher] Why are German numbers backwards? ___________________________________________________________________ Why are German numbers backwards? Author : tosh Score : 225 points Date : 2021-11-28 09:55 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (german.stackexchange.com) (TXT) w3m dump (german.stackexchange.com) | alkonaut wrote: | The answer goes through great lengths explaining why it's just | historical and everyone did it so it's _not_ backwards. That | sounds backwards to me. | t8e56vd4ih wrote: | confuses me a lot. I'm German but tend to speak numbers in | English in my mind when writing them down. | | also impressive is the number of cases: | | eins eine einer ein einem einen eines | | probably forgot a few | Pxtl wrote: | Now I'm curious, are there any cultures on earth that are fully | little-endian? I know RTL languages like Hebrew and Arabic put | the least-sig-digit on the right and are therefore read as | little-endian, but afaik when they read them aloud they follow | the Germanic approach of "Three hundreds and four and twenty", | not starting from the least-sig-digit. | | Also, Unicode does this crazy thing where it switches typing | direction to LTR when you start Latin numerals even if you're in | an RTL language, I think. I worked on an i18n project and the | behavior of Unicode with RTL languages confused the hell out of | me. | Adverblessly wrote: | Byblical Hebrew has numbers in "two and twenty" format | (including things like "fifty and hundred"), but in modern | Hebrew they are pronounced similarly to English, including | special exceptions for 11-19 and using Million->Billion | (Milliard allowed as well)->Trillion rather than | Million->Milliard->Billion->Billiard; And not including the | "thirty five hundred" oddity, in Hebrew that's "Three thousands | five hundred". | mro_name wrote: | Arabic/indian numbers, when written in arab writing direction | from right (lowest significant decimal) to left (most | significant) can just be read logically without scanning ahead | but in order small to big. | | Maybe german borrowed this RTL reading order for the 2-digit | numbers. | | German borrowed the word 'Ziffer' (= 'digit') from the arab word | for 'zero', so there's some connections. | otagekki wrote: | Be happy it's only backwards from 10 to 99. | | Have you checked Malagasy? We read the numbers totally backwards | although we've switched to the Latin alphabet like 200 years | ago... It's sometimes so inconvenient for everyday life, | especially for large amounts, that we end up counting in _French_ | instead. For numbers 11 to 99, we also use casual abbreviations | like (I translated) "one with two" for 21; or "seven with three" | for 37, but reading large numbers from 10,000 upwards (mostly | Malagasy currency) with the left-to-right writing system is | tedious. | throwawaybutwhy wrote: | Yan tyan tethera methera pimp... dick... bumfit... giggot. | | Which is to say, who are we to judge German numbers when there | are weirder ones: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbric#Counting_systems | jlg23 wrote: | As a German who nowadays speaks French most of the time, I long | for my simple German numbers... | | 99 in French is quatre-vingt-dix-huit (four-twenty ten-eight) | MikeCapone wrote: | Not that it matters too much, but what you speller out is 98, | not 99 | arendtio wrote: | Given that in English, as well as in German, contrary to the | roman letters, the numbers are arabic signs, I wonder in which | direction arabs spell their numbers. | | Does anybody know? | dredmorbius wrote: | If you think about it, arabic numerals are a right-to-left | script. | | 2,021: one and twenty and two thousand. | ahmedfromtunis wrote: | It's confusing. | | For everyday usage we use a mix of the two; thus, 1998 is read | as "a thousand and nine hundred and eight and ninety". So: | | 1998 >><< | | But according to the traditional way (you hear it used in the | news for example), it's read as "eight and ninety and nine | hundred and a thousand". So: | | 1998 <<<< | | However, this is so rare that many of the younger native Arabic | speakers aren't even aware of it. | arendtio wrote: | Isn't arabic in general written and read from right-to-left? | That way the traditional way seems very consistent. | dan-robertson wrote: | So in written Arabic, the digits go from least significant to | most significant which means a number looks the same when | written least-significant first right-to-left as it does in | e.g. written English, most-significant first left-to-right. | ahmedfromtunis wrote: | Absolutely. | | While I don't know for sure, some blame the new (mixed) way | of reading numbers on the proliferation of colonial | languages (English and French); i.e. people trying to mimic | how the numbers are in these languages, but only doing it | half way through. | | The problem though is that this mixed way is used across | the region, so it developing independently each time seems | a bit way too improbable to be a solid cause. | kingcharles wrote: | Another confusing scenario to me is that Arabs who invented the | numbering system write the digits left-to-right in a right-to- | left writing system: | | rqm htf wldty hw 8765309 | | It won't let me paste vertical Japanese text or I would | demonstrate that monstrosity too. | febstar wrote: | Most likely because Arabs did not invent the numbering system: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29370553 | egeozcan wrote: | Yeah let's not do original research in HN. This can have | millions of reasons. | geraneum wrote: | Interestingly, I have a German girlfriend who, when speaks | English, sometimes reads numbers backwards mistakenly. For | example, she reads 73, thirty-seven before quickly fixing it. | [deleted] | lr1970 wrote: | It is worse than "backwards". It is mostly forwards except for | the special case of the second digit that is transposed with the | first digit. For example, 123 becomes "one-hundred-three-and- | twenty". It was driving me nuts for ages. | willyt wrote: | "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in pie" is a line from English | nursery rhyme. Also two score and ten meaning 50 is not that old. | At some point fairly recently English must have changed to the | current system. Until the 1960's there were 12 pence in a | shilling and 20 shillings in a British pound sterling (240 | pence). | kevinwang wrote: | Yeah, I'm reading Pride and Prejudice right now (1813) and in | dialogue they speak numbers "backwards" like that. | timthorn wrote: | My grandmother would often use that form of words in regular | speech. | optimusprinceps wrote: | This is not unique to German. In Urdu, numbers higher than 20 are | pronounced: 1-2 for 21 (aik-ees), 5-4 for 45 etc. | ggrrhh_ta wrote: | I am sure it has been said, but it is not any more backwards than | "thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, | nineteen" -> three and ten, four and ten, five and ten... | | In fact, in German it keeps being consistent, while in English | and other languages you change the direction after 20... quite | arbitrarily... | | When you speak German they as backwards to you, as thirteen is to | you when you speak English... Not backwards at all... | Ekaros wrote: | And then there is eleven and twelve... Like not even | consistency inside one decade... We in Finland have decency two | say "one-second ... nine-second" | vnorilo wrote: | Yes, we say "yksitoista" (one of second), "kaksitoista (two | of second) and so on until twenty, where we revert to | "kaksikymmentayksi" (two tens and one; ten in actual plural). | But in some old books from the early 20th century, the | reversal goes on beyond 20: "kaksikolmatta" (two of third) | for 22 and so on. I do not know how that archaic usage deals | with 100+. | globular-toast wrote: | It's quite important for programmers especially to decouple the | idea of numbers from the notation and representation of numbers. | Start with Knuth, chapter four. There is only one integer that we | call "one", but there are infinitely many names for it: "un", | "ein" etc. You could even make up your own name if you like. | There is no right or wrong way to say or write numbers, there are | just more or less convenient ways, depending on the application. | | When it comes to natural language, the answer to "why is X the | way it is?" is always ultimately the same: because it works. It | is sometimes interesting to learn that this word came from that | root and so on, but ultimately we're just making sounds with our | throats and mouths that go into other people's ears. Everyone | around the world is talking about the same stuff, there are just | so many ways to say it we often settled on different ones. | xaedes wrote: | I often see a similar problem in code that deals with coordinate | system transformations. But there is a simple solution! It boils | down to properly naming your variables. | | When using transformation matrices to transform from one | coordinate system "In" into another coordinate system "Out" you | have two options to name the matrix: M_{In,Out} or M_{Out,In}, | which can be read as "In to Out" and "Out from In". Unfortunately | what I often see is the first notation. It looks simpler at | first, but it is actually backwards, similar to how the german | numbers are backwards. | | When you chain the transformations you get this weird forth and | back: | | M_{A to C} = M_{B to C} * M_{A to B} | | M_{A,C} = M_{B,C} * M_{A,B} | | Compare that to the (not backward) alternative: | | M_{C from A} = M_{C from B} * M_{B from A} | | M_{C,A} = M_{C,B} * M_{B,A} | | Note how the Bs line up, C is the most left in both sides of the | equation and A is on the right. When you transform a vector from | coordinate system A to, lets say C, it looks like this: "vec_C = | M_{C,A} * vec_A". Everything lines up and is in the natural order | the transformations are taking place in. Compared to this, the | backward notation is really confusing. | | I see people make mistakes when dealing with transformation | chains all the time because they use this weird M_{From,To} | notation, or worse, no notation involving the coordinate systems | at all. | | Like take this example: "M = M1 * inv(M3) * M2", what does that | even mean. Find names for the involved coordinate systems and | name the transformations accordingly. That could be: M1 | transforms to A from B, M3 is C_B, M2 is C_D. Then M is A_D: | | B_C = inv(C_B) | | A_D = A_B * B_C * C_D | dan-robertson wrote: | I was a bit unsatisfied by the top answer which mostly seemed to | be a reaction to the connotations of the word 'backwards' rather | than a discussion of the history which was tacked on at the end. | | I _think_ the answer is that languages didn't traditionally have | base-10 systems of counting words (e.g. in English you see things | based on scores with irregular number names below 20 persisting, | and you see systems based on the dozen and gross, and money and | measuring had other counting systems). When Hindu-Arabic numerals | arrived (via Fibonacci et al) and were adopted, languages adapted | more towards base-10 systems to match the written numbers, and | English ended up with a regular left-to-right system for numbers | above 19 and German ended up with irregularities up to, I think, | 99 (French and Dutch also have weird systems up to 99 I think). | So the fundamental point is that the reason number systems are so | similar (and therefore the reason this seemed like a sensible[1] | question) is that they were redeveloped based on the new | arithmetic system and people don't really notice the vestiges of | the old systems much. | | [1] I don't want to say that the question is bad but rather that | without the historical context it seems like a question more | specific to German than something like "why do adjectives come | before the noun in English and after it in French" which ends up | with an answer that is roughly general history plus "that's just | how it happened". | DFHippie wrote: | I personally liked the reply further down the stack that said | the German order is more useful in context of counting. You put | the digit that changes with every count first and the one that | stays the same for a while second (or mention it only when it | changes). Because you don't typical count methodically like | this if the number of things counted is large, this system only | obtains for two-digit numbers. This is just a hypothesis, but I | thought it was the most interesting answer. | thefifthsetpin wrote: | I do the same thing in English, especially when counting to | estimate time. I'm not thinking "twenty, twenty-one, twenty- | two" I'm thinking "twenty, -one, -two'. | | I think I prefer English's ordering for that. When I say | "twenty, -one," it sounds like twenty-one, but as it's the | twenty-first item that's not terribly confusing. Were it | "neun-, zwanzig" it sounds a bit more like "neunundzwanzig." | | I suppose that problem just moves to English if you're | counting down, though. _shrug_ | juped wrote: | All the top answers are similarly awful, just smug bleating and | ignoring the question. If someone doesn't know the etymological | history, they shouldn't say anything! | ilaksh wrote: | It wouldn't be a Stack Exchange site if the question and asker | were not insulted. | IshKebab wrote: | "Closed as too stupid, you bloody idiot." | cookiengineer wrote: | Actually, this is a modern thing. In the old German language | (pre-1800) the numbers were spelled in the correct order in the | areas where Hochdeutsch was spoken, with the single digit being | at the end. | | Also some early books from the era directly after the 30 jaehrige | Krieg still use the different way of spelling numbers (e.g. from | Eva Hartner comes to mind). | | Einhundert-Zwanzig-und-Eins is still a number everybody | understands, and it is also accepted in written form on bank | transfer checks. | | So I'd say just go ahead and use it this way :) the more people | use this way of spelling numbers, the more likely it is that the | language will adapt and change (back). | dctaflin wrote: | Fascinating. I studied Finnish for three years and it never | occurred to me that the numbers 8 and 9 (kahdeksan and yhdeksan) | mean 2-from-10 and 1-from-10. Though 10 isn't "deksan", it's | "kymmenen". Still the "yh" and "kah" should have been clearly | seen as akin to "yksi" and "kaksi" (one and two). | submeta wrote: | Turkish seems to be the most systematic than: | | 11 => On Bir (Ten One) | | 12 => On iki (Ten two) | | ... | | 21 => Yirmi bir (Twenty One) | | Etc | abdusco wrote: | Yet, the names of tens don't seem to follow any logic: | | 10: on (no connection to 1: bir) | | 20: yirmi (no connection to 2: iki) | | 30: otuz (no connection to 3: uc) | | 40: kirk (no connection to 4: dort) | | 50: elli (no connection to 5: bes) | | 60: altmis (sounds like 6: alti) | | 70: yetmis (sounds like 7: yedi) | | 80: seksen (sounds like 8: sekiz) | | 90: doksan (sounds like 9: dokuz) | | To this day, I can't figure out how "yedi" becomes "yetmis", or | whether they're related at all. Are they borrowed from Farsi? | egeozcan wrote: | It comes from Chuvash language. Ins forms counting numbers, | and language researches think they used to count in tens, as | they didn't need precise numbers. | | yedi/seven (m) ins -> yetimins -> yetmis/seventy | | alti/six (m) ins -> altimins -> altmis/sixty. see: | https://www.nisanyansozluk.com/?k=altm%C4%B1%C5%9F (in | Turkish) | | 90 is tokuz-on (dokuz-on, nine-ten), 80 is formed that way | too. | | 40, 30, 20 have specific names in old Turkish. Which means | they used those numbers a lot, but no evidence why. No | connection to 4, 3, 2 whatsoever (old Turkish for 4 ist tort, | for example). | | 50 (elli) comes from the same root as the word which means | hand (el). You can perhaps guess why. | | Long story short: You just need to memorize them if you are | speaking Modern Turkish because "historical reasons". Turks | started using numbers a bit too early and early weirdness was | never fully "corrected" :) | | What I like in Turkish is that you don't use the unnecessary | "one" before hundred/thousand. 100 -> yuz, 200 -> iki yuz. | you don't say "bir yuz" for 100, just "yuz". | rvense wrote: | No, Persian has words that are vaguely derived from the basic | numerals. | obiwan14 wrote: | The Yoruba system is very sane and logical. For example, the | Yoruba word for: | | 10: mewa 20: ogun 30: ogbon 40: ogoji, which is a contraction of | "ogun meji", or 20 twice. Meji is the word for 2. 100: Ogorun - | ogun marun, or 20 in 5, or 20 times 5. | | The fun part is in the numbers in between those. But to | understand them you have to learn how to count to 10, so here | goes: | | 1: Okan 2: Meji 3: Meta 4: Merin 5: Marun 6: Mefa 7: Meje 8: Mejo | 9: Meson 10: Mewa | | So: | | 11: mokanla - 1 more than 10 12: Mejila - 2 more than 10 13: | Metala - 3 more than 10 | | You get this point. It goes on like that until it gets to 16, | when the reference number becomes 20, so: | | 16: 4 less than 20 17: 3 less than 20 | | Until you get to 20. Past 20, then you start in a manner as with | past 10. | | So one can say that there's really no direction in pronunciation | of numbers in the Yoruba language. Just a very sane and logical | system. is | globalise83 wrote: | I find that in German you often have to wait for the end of a | complete sentence, often including a couple of subordinate | clauses, to have a clue what is going on. Let's just say that | backwards numbers are the least of my problems living in Bavaria. | Someone wrote: | The German word for that is _Bandwurmsatz_ ("tapeworm | sentence", because it goes on and on and on). Native speakers | likely have a higher threshold for calling a sentence that than | foreigners. | masteruvpuppetz wrote: | Arabic same as German. Urdu takes gold. Every number from 1 to | 100 has a different name | pritambaral wrote: | > Urdu takes gold. Every number from 1 to 100 has a different | name | | Urdu/Hindi numbers (20-99) are mostly small-digit-big-digit | combos, with special combination rules. One doesn't really have | to remember eighty different numbers because of the rules. | Plus, the distinction between how single-digit numerals are | pronounced and how these combined digits are pronounced helps | avoid confusion regarding order of the digits. | masteruvpuppetz wrote: | Well I somewhat disagree. The big number small number | combination is not trivial to remember. Sometimes many of | them don't even have any relation to previous numbers. Even | to this day 40yrs on, I have to think hard before uttering | any number. Eg: try remembering Unasi (79) and navasi (89), | sarsath (67), etc. | masswerk wrote: | Here's a guess: It could be because of an emphasis on counting. | Meaning, when counting, the significant, changing part of the | numbers is the least significant figure, while the higher | portions (potencies of the numeric system) become soon redundant. | There seem to be a cultural differences in languages regarding | the range in which this seems to matter: while it's just the tens | in English, this is the entire range up to 100 in German. | However, even in German this counting range ends at 100 at which | point we're probably dealing with numbers that had been | accumulated previously. | theGeatZhopa wrote: | Me as a foreign mother tongue find it really annoying, so I count | in my head in my mother language. | | There also has been a study, no matter if forward or backwards.. | the first language you learned to count will be the language you | use for counting in your head for the rest of your counting life | | Isn't that cool? Never noticed, now Always pay attention to :) | gus_massa wrote: | I also do most math in my native language, Spanish. When I'm | silent reading text in English, most of the times I "say" the | numbers in Spanish, but now always. Anyway, I have more | intuition about numbers in Spanish, so even if I read it in | English I may translate a few milliseconds later if I must | think about it. | | I can do some elementary calculations in English, like 2+3=5. | But for more complicated stuff like the second derivative of | x^3 I must switch to Spanish and translate the result. | Semaphor wrote: | I'm split about 50/50 with German (native and residence) and | English counting. But when I count in German and write numbers, | I tend to make more mistakes because of them being "backwards" | :( | ineedasername wrote: | Big-endian vs. little endian. | | In general, languages differ in syntactic structure on the level | of word order. For example, in Latin, word order a bit free form, | things could be moved around quite a bit and still make sense to | the listener. Probably allowed for some interesting creativity | and poetics. | | In English, I would say about a book, "the book on the table". In | another language, it may be "the on-the-table book." | | There's even a slight semantic difference where the later example | somewhat directly gives the book the property of being "on-the- | table". IIRC from my school days, that example resembles Japanese | construction, but please someone correct me if I'm wrong, it's | been a long time since my comp ling course work. | umanwizard wrote: | German numbers are actually mixed-endian when they get to three | digits and above. "136" is "one-hundred six-and-thirty". | davidkunz wrote: | Well, it's not really backwards, that would be too easy. Example: | | 3 482 975 is "dreimillionenvierhundertzweiundachzigtausendneunhun | dertfunfundsiebzig" | | which is in pseudo English: | | "three million four hundred two and eighty thousand nine hundred | five and seventy" | | Also beware of (German -> English): | | Million -> million | | Milliarde -> billion | | Billion -> trillion | | Billiarde -> quadrillion | | etc. | rapnie wrote: | > Milliarde -> billion | | Yeah, and you also see e.g. news anchors making mistakes in | translation saying things like (Dutch) "Ze investeerden een | biljoen". Turning a billion into a trillion. | | And I also heard that Biden wants to pump a "triljoen" in the | economy (quintillion) | qw wrote: | Norway used to have the same system, but the government | introduced a reform in the 50s to simplify. Many still use the | "old" way. | | The "correct" modern way is the same as in English. | kijin wrote: | Oh, the joys of middle-endian notation. | | But who are we to laugh at them, the American date notation | (M-D-Y) is just as weird. | blago wrote: | I recently realized that M-D-Y makes a lot more sense than we | give it credit for. Date formats needn't be about the | cardinality of the units, in this case it's about spoken | language. The M-D-Y format simply follows the order of the | words in (EDIT: American) English. We say January 4th, 1970. | Try reading D-M-Y in (EDIT: American) English and you will | quickly realize that it doesn't make sense. I suspect most | other spoken languages use 4th January, 1970 so D-M-Y feels | more natural to them. | | EDIT: I'm sorry if I offended you by equating American | English with English. Point taken. I misspoke. The point | remains. | Adverblessly wrote: | It is true that this is common in American English. This | goes somewhat to explain why patriotic Americans get | together every year to celebrate the most American of | holidays, "July Fourth" :) | [deleted] | jrockway wrote: | I always like the visual look of D-M-Y in writing; a word | bounded by two numbers (1 January 1970). | | If it's going to be all numbers, 1970-01-01 seems like the | right way to do it. (RFC3339 is the best time format.) | snthueoa wrote: | Yes, in England we'd typically say "(the) 4th of January, | 1970", in line with D-M-Y. I have no idea if the | correlation is causation, or which caused the other. | zebracanevra wrote: | Sorry, but English speaking countries that use DMY simply | say "4th of January", and it in no way doesn't make sense. | dan-robertson wrote: | I would say "[the] 4th of January 1970" in English. I think | saying "January 4th" is an Americanism. It feels to me that | in some sense 4th is acting as an adjective coming after | the noun it modifies, which is unusual in English. | lebuffon wrote: | Interesting that Americans commonly say "The fourth of | July". Is that a carry over from 1700's American | parlance? | stevesimmons wrote: | > We say January 4th, 1970. Try reading D-M-Y in English | and you will quickly realize that it doesn't make sense. | | Beware your unconscious ethnocentricity! Presumably you are | American. I am English. English is the language I use. | | The D-M-Y format simply follows the order of the words in | English. "We" say 4th of January, 1970. Try reading D-M-Y | in English and you will quickly realise that it does make | perfect sense... D-M-Y feels more natural to us. | blago wrote: | Good. Then we both agree that date formats tend to | reflect spoken language, not unit cardinality. FWIW | English is my second language. I'm sorry if my | ethnocentricity offended you. | [deleted] | smcl wrote: | > We say January 4th, 1970 | | I'd say "the fourth of January". Also, quick question - | what do you call Independence Day in the USA? :) | | Both ways are valid and can sound fine, it just depends on | the locale and context. | lordgroff wrote: | You could be Canada. MM-DD-YYYY? DD-MM-YYYY? Unless you're in | Quebec, you never have a clue. Government officially | recommends YYYY-MM-DD due to this, but in the real world it's | wild west. | majewsky wrote: | I'm a German in an international work environment. Since | I'm also fed up with this endless confusion, I'm sneakily | forcing YYYY-MM-DD on everyone by quietly editing every | instance of a date that I find in the wild, and it's | progressing rather well. | geoduck14 wrote: | Oh you deviant, you! I'm inspired. Keep it up. | jeroenhd wrote: | Probably an unpopular opinion, but despite its stupid order, | I think M-D-Y makes complete sense for (American) English. | | Some languages (or dialects of English) say "twelve/the | twelveth (of) January 2022", so 12-01-2022 is the obvious | notation. Many English dialects (the majority, given that | it's how America does it?) would say "January twelveth, | 2022", so 01-12-2022. | | It's not that the notation is spun around, some versions of | English just pronounce the dates backwards! This is the exact | opposite of the question asked about numbers, where English | (usually, mostly) follows the "logical" order. | | As language is subjective, I don't think there's a right or | wrong way to pronounce and order things. The West doesn't use | lakh and crore, but there's no reason why the short scale is | any better. People just decided to say things one way and | stick to it. | Someone wrote: | So, you're argument is that US English makes two mistakes, | so it's fine? | | I think that, in some cases, some systems are objectively | better than others because they are simpler. YYYY-MM-DD is | such a case. Given that it hasn't 'won' globally over | others, it seems it is not that much better, though. | | hh:mm:ss is one, too, not because no objectively better | ones exist, but because none of them get used (using mixed- | base base 24, base 60, base 60, plus, when using | milliseconds, base 1,000 doesn't make sense, but we didn't | manage to replace it | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time), so we're | stuck with it. | | That may have to do with the fact that it breaks down for | larger units, anyways. We could have a 10-day week, but for | months and years, it's impossible to avoid things getting | messy. | jeroenhd wrote: | The way a language work is not a "mistake". It's simply | how language works. People are not robots and they will | exhibit illogical behaviours if that's what feels better | to them. | | YYYY-MM-DD is probably the clearest way to express dates | for computers only because it's not ambiguous and it's | easy to sort. | | Decimal time was a mistake. We cannot group our 365.24 | days given by nature in a round, base 10 number so any | attempts to make the entire system decimal is foolish. We | could divide the day in 10 hours with each 100 seconds, | but that would mean redefining all SI units to use this | new second as a base. Distance is defined as the time it | takes for light in a vacuum to travel a certain distance, | we'd need to change that distance and all other units OR | have the "scientific second" and the "metric second". | wruza wrote: | A nitpick, 365.2425. Don't forget 400 year cycle! | | But I wouldn't mind to have a lunch at '43' (from 43200) | and go home at '65', without redefining SI. | unbanned wrote: | I've started warming to M-D-Y. Monthly cadence is more usual | in business, so you can easier prioritise thoughts during | conversation over D-M-Y | barbarbar wrote: | Isn't the last part: | | nine hundred and seventy five? | bserge wrote: | See how easy it is to get confused? :D | azernik wrote: | The point is that the way you say "seventy five" in German is | "five and seventy" | davidkunz wrote: | in pseudo English (meaning a direct translation) it is "nine | hundred five and seventy", in real English it is "nine | hundred and seventy five" | barbarbar wrote: | I somehow missed you wrote pseudo english. Not sure how I | managed that. | davidkunz wrote: | No worries! | dredmorbius wrote: | This is the short-scale / long-scale naming convention for | powers of ten. See: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale | | Million (10^6) / milliard (10^9) / billion (10^12) is, or at | least was, common in British English, where American English is | million / billion / trillion. | | Numbers above 999 million were typically written as, e.g., | "thousand million (10^9), million million (10^12), etc. | | Long scale also has _billiard_ and _trilliard_. | | American usage seems to be dominant now, the UK officially | converted in 1974. | cryptica wrote: | It's only backwards for the last 2-digit numbers. Once you go | into the hundreds and beyond, it's read from left to right. I | think most Germans probably don't even realize it. They just | recall all 2-digit numbers from memory. | | In French, to an outsider, quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (99) literally | sounds like 4 * 20 + 10 + 9... But most french people will think | of 'quatre-vingt-dix' as a single word (90) not thinking of | quatre (4), vingt (20) and dix (10) as 3 different words. This is | especially true because a lot of French words and names have a | hyphen in them so French people see the hyphen more as an | integral part of the word rather than a separator. | TulliusCicero wrote: | > It's only backwards for the last 2-digit numbers. Once you go | into the hundreds and beyond, it's read from left to right. | | Well, no, because "twenty three thousand" will be "three and | twenty thousand". Ditto for millions. | folli wrote: | It's still no match for French numbers: quatre-vingt-dix (four- | twenty-ten) for 90. | Lamad123 wrote: | nonante! | ginko wrote: | Or Danish where 90 is halvfems or (5 - 1/2) * 20 | Symbiote wrote: | 95 could be spoken as "fifteen and four score" in English, | and I'm told my great grandfather did this, though people | thought he was old fashioned. | | It would not be the Danish "five and half the fifth score" | though. This is crazy. | hjek wrote: | ... which is especially embarrassing because they got rid of | the problem in Swedish and Norwegian. | daneel_w wrote: | With one small exception in Swedish. We still do it | backwards for some numbers in the 10-19 range. 13 = tretton | (three ten), 14 = fjorton (four ten), and so on. | xwolfi wrote: | Yeah but I'd never blame someone for telling me "nonante", the | Belgian (and more correct latin) variant. | dan-robertson wrote: | There's a joke in French: | | What is 20*4? | | Answer: 80 because multiplication is commutative. | Koshkin wrote: | Yet, Commutative Algebra is a German invention. | Bud wrote: | French is not actually that weird; it's just weird from 80-99. | From 10-79, it's just like English handles it. They just never | came up with single words for 80 and 90. | Lamad123 wrote: | It's weird form 70-79 as well! To say 79, you need to say | sixty-ten-nine! | CorrectHorseBat wrote: | But they actually did! Septante, huitant/octante and nonante | are real French words. Only the French don't want to use | them. | GistNoesis wrote: | Note that you cannot use heptante for septante. | smoe wrote: | I think various french speaking regions outside France do use | single words for those. E.g. in neighboring Switzerland I | learned 70, 80, and 90 as septante, huitante and nonante if I | remember correctly (I'm from the german speaking part) | Bud wrote: | Yes, they do. Belgian French has "nonante", for instance, | which would be better, but which just never caught on in | "standard" French. It appears in my Cassell's French | Dictionary, but it's marked "dial." for dialect. | MauranKilom wrote: | It's also weird for 50-59. English does not say "fourty | twelve" ("quarante-douze"). | CorrectHorseBat wrote: | Neither does French, you're confusing 50 with 70. | https://frm.wiktionary.org/wiki/quarante-douze | | Edit: 50, not 60. | bramjans wrote: | At least in Belgium we fixed that with "septante" | CorrectHorseBat wrote: | But making things completely logical would have been too | much for us so we kept quatre-vingt. | orthoxerox wrote: | > Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, | upon this continent, a new nation | kello wrote: | If you think about it we say numbers "backwards" in english in | the teens: "four-teen, fif-teen, six-teen" and so on. | [deleted] | layer8 wrote: | It may have to do with the fact that, in German, by default the | first syllable of a word is stressed, and in two-digit numbers | the least significant digit is actually the more distinctive one | in ordinary usage (in terms of wanting to express an exact | number). Note how in English, the stress is usually on the least | significant digit as well ("twenty- _three_ "). | wycy wrote: | German numbers are basically written as: | | 10n 10n-1 ... 104 103 102 100 101 | | Descending powers of 10 then the old switcheroo at the end. | hibbelig wrote: | The switcheroo happens in every three-digit group: When you | read the number 123,123,123 out loud, you say "drei(3)-und- | zwanzig(20)" three times. (I've used comma as the thousand | separator here.) | [deleted] | chrizel wrote: | German here... I hate how we say numbers. Even after 36 years I | still have problems with it. If I have to dictate phone numbers | I'm saying each digit separately because everything else is just | confusing and very often leads to swapped numbers on the other | end. (sadly, most Germans say phone numbers as sets of two, and | not as single digits) It just makes no sense and I very much | prefer English, it is much more logical. | | Some people have founded the association "Zwanzigeins" (look it | up, they have a web site) where they try to push for another way | of saying numbers in German and teaching them at school. But even | they admit that the chances are very slim we change the way we | say numbers. | hulitu wrote: | German is an LSB language. | moffkalast wrote: | And it's not just German either. If you take the word 175 for | example: | | German: einhundertfunfundsiebzig (one hundred five and seventy) | | Slovenian: sto petinsedemdeset (one hundred five and seventy) | | Which is weird when you look at all the other neighbouring | languages: | | Polish: sto siedemdziesiat piec (one hundred seventy five) | | Czech: sto sedmdesat pet (one hundred seventy five) | | Slovak: sto sedemdesiat pat (one hundred seventy five) | | Hungarian: szaz hetven ot (one hundred seventy five) | | Italian: centosettantacinque (one hundred seventy five) | | Croatian: sto sedamdeset pet (one hundred seventy five) | | Serbian: same as Croatian but in cirilic | | You get the idea. | | Given that, I'm holding you Germans responsible for our also | stupid number system. | | Sincerely, a Slovenian. | frankfrankfrank wrote: | You are also forgetting that you are comparing two totally | different language trees (Germanic and Slavic) ... ignoring | Italian for the moment. | | You essentially listed German and several dialects of the | same language. If you had listed several of the German | language dialects that also slightly vary how they say the | number in the same German format/order you would have had a | list of equal if not greater number of support for the German | format. | | I think that may also provide a bit of a clue as to why the | order/format is different since it must have happened some | time after English formed from the German language, possibly | when/because the British adopted the format/order of the | Romans. But that's just speculation/hypothesis on my part. I | suspect there are people who have a better insight into how | that separation happened. | frankfrankfrank wrote: | You put so much effort into that and then totally missed | French? four-twenty-ten-seven ... yup, 97, of course. | Multiplication and addition required. | | That being said. I wonder how much of those kinds of | complications lead to higher IQ and higher education test | scoring. Simplification also dumbs down, stunts the mind. | | Chinese Mandarin isn't quite as challenging, but they too | essentially use multiplication 40 is "4 tens" | gruez wrote: | >That being said. I wonder how much of those kinds of | complications lead to higher IQ and higher education test | scoring. Simplification also dumbs down, stunts the mind. | | AFAIK the net effect is that languages with complicated | number representations do worse on math tests. | | >Chinese Mandarin isn't quite as challenging, but they too | essentially use multiplication 40 is "4 tens" | | Can you say that the same about English? ie. four-ty = 4 x | 10 | | edit: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191121-why-you- | might-be... | frankfrankfrank wrote: | >Can you say that the same about English? | | It's similar but I don't think it qualifies as the same | since we do not say "four tens". Forty is a concept in | itself, just like suffix -s for plural is a separate | concept from singular. Suffixes and prefixes are | modifiers. We don't ordinarily say, for example, "many | apple", we say "apples". | rahimnathwani wrote: | When I say eight-ten in Chinese, my mind is thinking of | the singular concept '80', not 8 tens. | | The same as when I say eight-y in English. | jacquesm wrote: | There was some theory that because the first ten digits | in Chinese are very short phonetically that it is easier | to keep numbers in your head. | thaumasiotes wrote: | The first numbers are short in every language. That | doesn't distinguish Chinese in any way. | | Taking some salient examples, in English 9 out of 10 of | those numbers are single syllables and 7 is two. In | French, all ten are single syllables. | toephu2 wrote: | It does distinguish Chinese. It's quicker to count to 10 | in Chinese than in most other languages. | | Malcolm Gladwell did some good research ('Outliers' is a | great book) in this area. | | Chinese are generally better at math than other | ethnicities precisely because of their language. | | _Take a look at the following list of numbers: | 4,8,5,3,9,7,6. Read them out loud to yourself. Now look | away, and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence | before saying them out loud again. | | Gladwell points out that the English speakers have about | 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly, | but the Chinese are almost certain to get it right every | time. He explains, "Because as human beings we store | digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. | We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read | within that two second span. "And Chinese speakers get | that list of numbers--4,8,5,3,9,7,6--right every time | because--unlike English speakers--their language allows | them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds," | Gladwell adds._ | | https://gineersnow.com/students/best-explanation-asians- | good... | zzt123 wrote: | I'll be damned, I just tried that and it was | exceptionally easier to do in Mandarin, a language that I | have to think to count in, than in English. | perl4ever wrote: | That seems to me like a lack of imagination on his part | even assuming he has some grounds for the "2 second" | rule. | | How does he know that people remember it via "reading out | loud to themselves"? | | Maybe they visualize it instead. | | Maybe people chunk it into a 3 digit and a 4 digit | number, like a phone number. | | Why should "reading out loud to yourself" be limited to | the speed of actual speech anyway? | cormacrelf wrote: | Thanks Malcolm, very scientific. As we all know, maths is | all about memorising short sequences of numbers, and | always being sure to say them out loud or at the very | least sub-vocalise them. My maths teacher always liked to | read us our numbers like it was storytime, gather round | kids, we're going to learn about the lottery again, so | many of you struggled with that last week. And of course, | those Asians beat us every time, us poor whites could | barely string three or four numbers together. | loudmax wrote: | Well if we're just speculating here, I'll add that since | Chinese is tonal, Chinese speakers will remember the tune | of sequence, not just a list of values. It's easier to | remember a melody than a phone number. | ajuc wrote: | Even non-tonal languages have melodies, for example | English people use a lot of intonation compared for to my | native Polish. When I was in UK everybody sounded like | they were talking to infants or dogs :) | | You don't normally use it for numbers but you certainly | can, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ | | Another useful mnemonic that for me works even better | than melody is rhythm. I noticed that I have about | 20-notes buffer for last-heard rhythmic phrase even if I | wasn't paying attention at the time. So for example after | I ran down a flight of stairs I can count them by | remembering the rhythm of my steps and adding them. My | friend who has way better short term memory than me can't | do this, but he can see the image he was looking at | recently. Now that's cheating :) | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Even non-tonal languages have melodies, for example | English people use a lot of intonation compared for to my | native Polish. When I was in UK everybody sounded like | they were talking to infants or dogs | | It might just be more obvious since the English patterns | are unfamiliar. | | One of the more surreal experiences I've had was watching | an English-language news broadcast in China. The | presenter was speaking English and had obviously put in a | lot of effort trying to learn what natural English | sounded like. The general pattern of intonation over her | sentences was quite realistic for English. | | What made it surreal was that the intonation didn't match | the words. Everything she said, it was like she was using | the intonation pattern of some other sentence and | applying it to a completely different sentence. | DonaldFisk wrote: | In Arabic, numbers from 1-10 are waaHid, ithnayn, | thalaatha, arba:a, khamsa, sitta, sab:a, thamaaniya, | tis:a, and :ashara. No monosyllabic numbers, and 8 has | _four syllables_. And even these are short compared to | the numbers in Inuktitut. | glandium wrote: | Interestingly, in Algerian Arabic, while other numbers | are similar, two is different. It's zouj (one syllable). | Except when counting e.g. twenty two, where it is similar | to ithnayn (more like t'nin) | | BTW, it's similar to German in that regard, because it's | two-twenty. | | Also interestingly, the way 8 sounds in Algerian Arabic | would be 2 syllables. Although take it with a grain of | salt because it's third-hand information. I learned this | from my father, who's not native (but has lived in | Algeria in his childhood) | thaumasiotes wrote: | This is kind of a tangent, but I understand that the | native title of the Arabian Nights is 'alf layla wa | layla, the book of "a thousand nights and a night". | | What is the "one" night in that title? Any chance wa is | related to waaHid? | gfaure wrote: | No. "wa" in Arabic corresponds to "and" in English. | nousermane wrote: | Majority of French speakers say 80 as "4 x 20": | | https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quatre-vingts#French | varajelle wrote: | Not "4x20", but "4 20", and in a single word that means | "80" without thinking about 4 and 20. | | When you say eighteen, you think just "18" and not "8 | teens". (Similarly, when you say "backwards" you think of | the direction, not of "back wards") | gknapp wrote: | It's easy to pick on the weirdness of french numbers, but | honestly "quatre-vingt" ends up just being a word like | "eighty" in its own right. No French speaker is multiplying | 20s in their head. | | Probably the only true weirdness is the 70s and 90s because | they use the teen words like douze and treize, but that's | honestly where the weirdness ends, and larger numbers | follow very consistent rules. | dstroot wrote: | Long ago "forty" in English may have begun as "four ten" | which most likely became "fourteen" but four tens could | have maybe become forty. | stan_rogers wrote: | "Fourteen" (four and ten) would have been from "scoring | numbers", where you get to twenty (a score), keep track | of the scores separately, and start over. Up to twelve, | we used a duodecimal/dozenal system (a separate word for | each number). That was also common in other non-Germanic | Indo-European languages, notably the Brythonic Celtic | languages (and various versions of Brythonic scoring | numbers are still used in parts of Britain, depending on | the pre-English dialect spoken in the area and changes | over time, especially in children's games). French | numbering still shows signs of "scoring", especially in | the 60/70 and even moreso in the 80/90 region. | jmchuster wrote: | Chinese (and derivatives) basically just count like | English, but without the inconsistencies. | | 4444 = Four thousand, four hundred, four ten, four. | | Though it is interesting that they group by powers of 10k | instead of powers of 1k. | didip wrote: | Chinese is sweet and consistent until 10,000. They | introduced a new word for it, wan(Mo ) instead of 10 x | 1000. | umanwizard wrote: | Why is that inconsistent? There are also separate words | for 1, 10, 100, and 1,000, so why not 10,000 ? | novok wrote: | If your number separators are every 3, then it feels | weird. If it's every 4, then it does not. Change numbers | into 1, 10, 1000, 1'0000 and then it doesn't feel like | it's going against your writing habits. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Chinese (and derivatives) basically just count like | English, but without the inconsistencies. | | Not really. "One thousand five" is 1,005 in English, but | it's 1500 in Mandarin. For 1005 you'd need to say "one | thousand zero five". | numpad0 wrote: | Could that be where "3V3" style notation came from? In | electronics, 3V3 means 3.3V, not 3/3V or 3x3V or 3.003V, | and likewise 1R5 means 1.5 Ohm. It's handy but took me a | while to get used to. | thaumasiotes wrote: | Don't know; Chinese usage seems unlikely to have been | influential in the relevant time period. | | There is another oddity in Chinese numbers which requires | a bit of grammar explanation: | | Chinese requires measure words when applying numbers to | nouns. English has count nouns and mass nouns ("three | crackers", where "cracker" is a count noun, versus "three | loaves of bread", where "bread" is a mass noun); Chinese | has only mass nouns. [1] Thus: | | San Ge Ren "three (San ) people (Ren )", with Ge being | a measure word appropriate for people | | Yi Zhi Gou "one (Yi ) dog (Gou )", with Zhi being a | measure word appropriate for animals | | Yi Shou Ge "one song (Ge )", with Shou being a measure | word appropriate for poetry | | Most nouns use Ge . | | The oddity is that Ban ("one half") occurs before the | measure word when it represents the total amount, but | after when it's a modification. | | Yi Ge Xiao Shi "one hour (Xiao Shi )" | | Liang Ge Xiao Shi "two (Liang ) hours" | | Ban Ge Xiao Shi "half an hour" | | Yi Ge Ban Xiao Shi "an hour and a half" | | This also occurs with money, where it's probably the same | grammatical rule: | | San Kuai "Y=3" | | San Kuai Er "Y=3.20" | | But for this to be fully consistent, I'd expect Ling Ge | Ban Xiao Shi "zero and a half hours" where in reality | Ban Ge Xiao Shi is used. | | [1] Some people have argued that since e.g. "one day" Yi | Tian has no measure word between Yi and Tian , Tian | must be a noun that requires no measure word. This is | wrong; it is a measure word that requires no noun. An | easy way to see this is that reduplication carries the | same meaning that generally applies to reduplicated | measure words, and not the meaning that applies to | reduplication of nouns -- Tian Tian means "every day" in | the same way that Ge Ge means "every [one]"; it does not | mean "cute little day" in the same way that Gou Gou | means "doggie". | pezezin wrote: | Japanese is like that too (probably got it from Chinese), | with the added fun that it has two sets of numerals: the | indigenous Japanese one and the borrowed Chinese one. So | you not only need to memorize the counting word but also | which kind of numeral to use. | novok wrote: | Can you just say the measure words like you do in English | then? Like "I'll have 3 loaves please". I guess it would | be like San Ge or similar? | | Also thanks for saying that they're equivalent to things | like "Schools of fish" or "loaves of bread". They make | way more sense to me now! | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Like "I'll have 3 loaves please". I guess it would be | like San Ge or similar? | | That's it exactly, and it's very common. Any time the | noun is clear from context, you can leave it out. (You | shouldn't leave out the measure word though - where in | English you might have "I'll take three", in Chinese | you'd still want San Ge .) | | If you walk into a restaurant, someone will ask Ji Wei | "how many?". Ji is a question word for small numbers, | and Wei is a (formal, polite) measure word for people. | quesera wrote: | No, that's just pragmatism. The origins happen to be | US/American: | | It's the most compact, non-ambiguous representation, and | avoids symbols that print poorly or are not available | everywhere. | jeromegv wrote: | As a French speaker, you don't tend to see those as | multiplication | | You associate "quatre vingt" as meaning 80. In your head | it's 80. You don't think four times twenty. So it's not as | complicated as it looks. I don't see kids really getting | that wrong. | fantod wrote: | Yup, a friend of mine learning French a few years ago | asked me how I, as a native French speaker, deal with | this problem. I didn't understand what he was talking | about because I had never in my life even noticed it. | Learned how to count before I learned how to multiply, | after all. | emilecantin wrote: | It's even funnier when you're learning multiplications | and divisions. We still have to think when we do 4 times | 20, and every time we realize it's right there in the | name. | detaro wrote: | As someone who only had basic high-school "French as a | third language" and was never good at it, I'd still agree | with that. it's one "symbol" so to speak for mental | parsing. | frankfrankfrank wrote: | I get that. It's the power of the brain's user of | generalizations, i.e., patterns or classes, to represent | things. The brain clearly also handles disambiguation far | better than we consciously know to do. It seems like the | brain essentially has a class named quatre vingt and it | has a pattern of 4*20 that resolved to the concept of 80 | which means 20+20+20+20. | | It clearly comes from a lack of having a separate term | for 80 or even 90 for that matter the way that German and | English do; which I find peculiar too, considering that | French a Romance language (not the heart romance), while | the people are largely Germanic in origin, i.e., the | Franks. It makes sense when you consider how the roman | numeral system functions and that the Franks were in far | closer proximity to Rome than the Germans, including the | ones that moved to the British isles and became the | English, i.e., Anglos and the Saxons, Germans. It seems | that those interplays and intersections with the cultures | are what determined how French language numbering worked | based on when and where and what they had contact with. | saiya-jin wrote: | 80 maybe, but 91-99 are properly ridiculous. Sure its | easy to get it, but it highlights deeper issue I've had | since I've started learning french - its not elegant nor | easy language, rather a 'spaghetti code' one, a mess of | rules and tons of exceptions, and many things defy logic | and are there 'because its like that and you have to | memorize it'. You can have great talk on B1 level for | example in English or German, with French you are still | often lost quickly unless everybody else tries hard to | dumb it down for you. | | There is an institute in France hose sole purpose is to | guard language, I wonder why they didn't find the | motivation to clean it up a bit. It would make it much | more attractive for outsiders and make it more global. | | And its not just me, literally everybody I speak to who | attempted to learn french has similar experience. Either | they suck it up, face often humiliation from native | speakers from their mistakes (its quite something to see | senior banking colleagues laughing like little kids and | pointing finger at you on a project meeting because you | mixed gender of a noun) or often just give up. | Zababa wrote: | I don't think "cleaning up" a language talked by so many | people in the world is reasonable because some people | have trouble learning it. | | > Either they suck it up, face often humiliation from | native speakers from their mistakes (its quite something | to see senior banking colleagues laughing like little | kids and pointing finger at you on a project meeting | because you mixed gender of a noun). | | I'm not sure if it's a language problem or a people | problem. I often encounter people that mix the gender of | nouns, and I don't really care about it. It's a lot to | learn and not very important. Just like some people don't | have a great accent, that's how it is, it doesn't stop | people from communicating. Same for the people that I | know, unless we're asked we wouldn't bother correcting | someone that "le table" is actually "la table" because | tables are female. | | On my side, I find the pronunciation of English to be | very hard to learn and to master, and am scared of | sounding stupid whenever I talk English, so I avoid it, | and end up not being good at it, so I can understand the | sentiment. | ldrndll wrote: | If it's any consolation, I find English pronunciation | very difficult, and I'm a native speaker. It surprises me | that in my thirties I still regularly encounter | situations where I want to use a word and realise I've | never heard it spoken before, so have no idea if the | pronunciation I use in my head when reading it is | correct. | | I also often hear others mispronounce words; friends, | colleagues, even on TV. | | I guess my point is that if you're mispronouncing English | words you're speaking it like a native! | pjerem wrote: | > Either they suck it up, face often humiliation from | native speakers from their mistakes (its quite something | to see senior banking colleagues laughing like little | kids and pointing finger at you on a project meeting | because you mixed gender of a noun) or often just give | up. | | I'm French and, at least in my circle, I've never seen a | native French << humiliating >> a non-native trying to | speak French. | | And to me there is two reasons : - we know our language | is difficult to learn - we are really bad when it comes | to speak any foreign language | | As*oles are totally a thing (especially in the | banking/financial sector) but most French people are | admirative of anyone who speaks more than one language. | Because most of us can't. | aktau wrote: | This was cleaned up in the Belgian variant of French: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_French. | | - 70 = septante (versus soixante-dix, which is 60-10) | | - 80 = huitante (versus quatre-vingt, which is 40-20), | *EDIT*: wrong, see below. | | - 90 = nonante (versus quatre-vingt-dix, which is | 40-20-10) | | The article also mentions something interesting I didn't | know: | | > The use of septante for "seventy" and nonante for | "ninety", in contrast to Standard French soixante-dix | (literally "sixty-ten") and quatre-vingt-dix'("four- | twenty-ten"). Those former words occur also in Swiss | French. Unlike the Swiss, however, Belgians never use | huitante for quatre-vingts ("four twenties"), with the | use of octante in the local Brussels dialect as being the | only exception. Although they are considered Belgian and | Swiss words, septante and nonante were common in France | until around the 16th century, when the newer forms began | to dominate.[4] | | *EDIT*: This doesn't appear to be true, Belgian French | speakers also say quatre-vingt for 80. | soco wrote: | The Swiss French speakers found a way around that: | nonante. Ninety, the Swiss way, not bothered by the | French Academy. | tsimionescu wrote: | Would you call 'four hundred' multiplication? That's a | strange way of looking at it for me. | kkylin wrote: | As a native Mandarin speaker, I don't tend to think of the | "ten" as a ten. If anything, for me it conjures up an image | of the number of 0s. So, the "hundreds" part in "four | hundreds" would just means four followed by two zeros, etc. | I may even have been taught this as a child; can't | remember. Anyway, no arithmetic involved, at least not | explicitly. | | I don't know that this generalizes -- other Mandarin | speakers may have a different experience. I'm _really_ | curious how Chinese-speaking people thought about these | things before Arabic numerals, but not sure we can ever | have a clear answer to that question. | yodsanklai wrote: | > four-twenty-ten-seven ... yup, 97, of course | | As others said, French speakers parse "four-twenty-ten" as | ninety. Nobody thinks about this in term of 4 * 20 + 10. | Although, I remember that it confused me a little bit when | I learned how to count. | | That being said, I'd be in favour to switch to the | Swiss/Belgian/Canadian way and replace "quatre vingt dix" | by "nonante". | belval wrote: | Sad fact: French Canadian don't use the (much better) | Swiss/Belgian septante/octante/nonante and the awareness | in Quebec just isn't high enough to hope for a switch. | | It's a shame because soixante-dix, quatre-vingt and | quatre-vingt-dix are confusing to write (I probably made | a mistake somewhere). | yodsanklai wrote: | > French Canadian don't use the (much better) | Swiss/Belgian septante/octante/nonante | | Sorry for the mistake (I did check on wikipedia before | adding Canada do the list but got it wrong). | | > the awareness in Quebec just isn't high enough to hope | for a switch. | | Same in France. I believe most of us regard | "septante/octante/nonante" as amusing and exotic | sounding. Sadly, I've never heard anyone advocating for a | switch. | glandium wrote: | Note that Belgians ans Swiss don't agree on 80. It's | huitante on one side and octante on the other (but I | don't remember which is which) | belval wrote: | Interesting, I knew Swiss said octante and my Belgian | friends all say octante as well. Perhaps it's a regional | thing? | monsieurgaufre wrote: | I'm a french canadian and I've never in my life heard | someone use "septante/octante/nonante". I understand the | difficulty while learning French but, as a native | speaker, we don't even think about it. | throwaway894345 wrote: | French is definitely weird in that it introduces | multiplication, but the addition operands are still in | descending order as with English. | | > I wonder how much of those kinds of complications lead to | higher IQ and higher education test scoring | | Probably not much. I doubt francophones are doing | multiplication when they think of the number 80 any more | than anglophones do addition when we think of the number | 14. Rather, speakers presumably both memorize the names of | each number and move on with life. | nicoburns wrote: | > That being said. I wonder how much of those kinds of | complications lead to higher IQ and higher education test | scoring. Simplification also dumbs down, stunts the mind. | | I would say more that simplification makes the boring bits | easy and allows the mind to concentrate on more interesting | higher-level concepts. As someone who has attended a range | of educational institutions for the same courses, one thing | that really stood out to me about the "top-level" ones was | that there was none of this "life must be hard" attitude. | For the core material, the teaching was excellent and | designed to make it as easy to learn for students as | possible to learn. Then while "lesser" universities were | examining students on those core materials (often with | questions they'd seen before), the top universities asking | novel questions on material that hadn't even been | explicitly covered, but which the students could reasonably | be expected to answer on because they had a really solid | grasp of the core stuff. | hutzlibu wrote: | "life must be hard" | | Ah yes, this is very german. | | If it is not a grind, it is not really work you are | doing. | | And it is still kind of a honor badge to moan about how | little you sleep, as this shows how hard you are working | all day and the ones sleeping the most less, are the | hardest. | | (But I do see some healthy change in that regard) | DenisM wrote: | > the ones sleeping the most less | | Good god, this is beautiful. Is this a German idiom? | hutzlibu wrote: | Not literally, as far as I know (I am also still | wondering, of whether it was correct grammar), but there | are plenty of: | | "Morgenstund hat gold im Mund" | | morning time is gold | | (to which I agree at times) | | or | | "Der fruhe Vogel fangt den Wurm" | | The early bird catches the worm. | | (to where I say, maybe the worm should have slept in that | day) | hamburglar wrote: | I think the poster you are responding to is referring to | the "beauty" (sarcastically, I assume) of the phrasing | "most less" instead of "least." It would be right in line | with the confusing way numbers are spoken. | truculent wrote: | A trivial aside: English used to have something similar in | a "score" being 20. So "four-score and ten" would be 90, | not too dissimilar from the French. | FroshKiller wrote: | English still has it. Nobody took it away. It's still in | use. | FascistDonut wrote: | How? What is a common modern day use? | FroshKiller wrote: | The same meaning of a group of twenty. "There must have | been a score of cars at the drive-thru." It hasn't | changed. | jhbadger wrote: | Obviously Americans know it from the Gettysburg Address | where Lincoln referred to the US being founded "four | score and seven years ago", but he was being | intentionally poetic, but you may not count 19th century | as "modern" (even though from the linguistic perspective | it is), but people often say things like "there are | scores of movies where the protagonist finds out he is a | prophesized hero" even today. | blacksmith_tb wrote: | I think it's still used a bit in British English, along | with other things that strike the American ear as archaic | like 'stones' and 'fortnights'. | BrandoElFollito wrote: | No, it is a word like ananas or worm, an image in your | head. | | Nobody in France would do any multiplication, it is just a | word. | | We have a weird language ('eaux' is 'o', imagine that?) but | this is not one of the crazy things. | alisonkisk wrote: | And English: "six-teen" (six and ten) and "Eight-y-Seven" | (eight times ten, plus seven) | robbedpeter wrote: | >>Simplification also dumbs down, stunts the mind. | | Citation needed? | | Simplification is itself an act of intelligence. Removing | complexity is difficult. Einstein, Feynman, Newton, and | innumerable others are lauded for simplifying enormously | complex ideas to the point of comprehension by the masses. | | Oversimplifying is bad, because it implies lost | information. Simplification itself is a form of | sophisticated articulation. | | More efficient representations of numbers are generally | associated with better performance in math, historically. | Roman numerals being a prime example of unnecessary | complexity, compared to the maths being done by Indian | people, and so on. Civilization tends to abandon | conventions that are superseded in advantage. | | Making things more difficult to formulate for structural | reasons unrelated to the problem at hand is inefficient. | | Having inefficient numbering in language is wasted energy | at best. | solidangle wrote: | Dutch: honderdvijfenzeventig (hundred five and seventy) | [deleted] | moffkalast wrote: | Ah yep, seems like there is actually one more: | | Danish: hundrede femoghalvfjerds (hundred five and seventy) | | And the rest I've checked now: | | Romanian: o suta saptezeci si cinci (hundred seventy five) | | French: cent soixante quinze (hundred sixty fifteen) | | Swedish: hundra sjuttiofem (hundred seventy five) | | Finnish: sata seitsemankymmentaviisi (hundred seventy five) | | Norweigan: hundre og syttifem (hundred seventy five) | | Spanish: ciento setenta y cinco (hundred seventy five) | qw wrote: | Norway has an alternative that is the same as the | Germans. (175 - hundred and five and seventy) | | It was more popular in the past, but is still used in | many dialects. | eitland wrote: | I grew up with both the old one and the new one so I | sometimes say it the old way and I am almost happy that | my kids don't understand it immediately so I have to | correct myself. | | Fun fact: it was actually decided in Stortinget (the | supreme legislature of Norway) in November 1950 and | implemented in July 1951, as far as I know the only time | a matter of how to pronounce something has been decided | at that level. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | the Danish is actually a little more complicated | | the word for 60 in Danish is tres the word for 50 in | Danish is halvtreds - so basically half 60 (I guess cause | the original counting system in the Nordic region was | based on 20s?), and since Danes don't pronounce the d and | the halv is quick sometimes you get confused in what is | being said. | | But then the word for 80 is firs, fee-es with a partially | swallowed r sound in there somewhere. and 70 is | halvfjerds - half firs. | | The word for 90 is halvfems - half fives. | | a Dane speaking quickly can confuse others really quickly | with these numbers as to whether it was said | 50,60,70,80,90 and then you put the second number in | 'backwards' as said, so | | 92 is to og halvfems - toe oh hellfems and so forth, but | said very quickly with a tendency to not fully pronounce | all of a word. | BorisJensen wrote: | The system is actually based on scores, 20, which is | called a snes in older Danish, so halvtreds is short for | halv tredje snes, the half third score, and 60 is tres, | short for tre snese, i.e. three scores and so on. So for | the tens between 50 and 90, we count scores, and if it's | not a whole number of scores, we name it the half of the | score that we are into. It's also preserved in a very | infrequently used variant word for 80, firsindstyve, | which is just 4 score, more explicitly (tyve is the | modern word for twenty). In conclusion: Yes, the Danish | number system is relatively silly. | xorcist wrote: | > the original counting system in the Nordic region was | based on 20s? | | No other Nordic language is like that. | | It's probably not a coindicence that the same system the | French use. Apparently French was the coolest language | you could speak in the 1700s and all the nobility did it. | | Only the Danish swalllowed the "twenty" part of the it, | so it's no longer possible to deduce any meaning from | hearing the word. Add that to the fact that "half" has a | universally accepted meaning too, but should be | understood here as "ten-less-than". | | So I think Danish wins the most bizarre counting system | over the French. And the French is far more so than the | German. All they're guilty of is being careless with the | ordering of numerals. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | >> the original counting system in the Nordic region was | based on 20s? | | >No other Nordic language is like that. | | ok, I was just guessing, hence the question mark. | | But I guess Boris Jensen described the reason | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29369172 | yesbabyyes wrote: | Danish is in fact slightly more complicated. They have a | vigesimal system with a base of 20, with halvfjerds, or | halffourth, meaning 31/2 times 20. So rather hundred five | and three-and-a-half score. | tribaal wrote: | French should translate to "hundred sixty fifteen" which | is another level of aberration altogether (I'm French) | lr1970 wrote: | Does the cognitive energy expended by French to do basic | counting conditions their brain from early childhood for | mathematical proficiency resulting in so many great | mathematicians whose native language was French? | </end_of_joke> | moffkalast wrote: | Ah right I remember hearing somewhere that you guys don't | have words for 70, 80, and 90 and do this odd sum of two | thing. I suppose there are worse ways than the reverse | German :D | speedgoose wrote: | The French language has such words, but Frenchmen don't | use them. For example they prefer to say the old | fashioned "quatre-vingt-dix" (4 - 20 - 10) instead of the | perfectly fine "nonante" that French speakers in Belgium | use. | tribaal wrote: | It's the same in Switzerland, which makes an order of | magnitude more sense IMO: | | Soixante | | Septante | | Huitante | | Nonante | | Cent | [deleted] | fhars wrote: | What I always wonder, do French programmers generalize | this numbering scheme to pronounce 0x4B as _quatre seize | onze_? | [deleted] | bistro wrote: | More precisely, French (cent soixante quinze) is | actually: hundred sixty fifteen. Seventies, eighties | (quatre-vingt = four twenties), and nineties (quatre- | vingt-dix = four twenties and ten) are a mess in most | French dialects. | spockz wrote: | In Dutch it is "honderd vijf en zeventig" (one hundred five | and seventy). So the same as in German. Do we actually know | the origin or reason? | jhncls wrote: | Even more loyal than the French to the ancient vigesimal | counting system are the Basque[0] and the Welsh[1]. | | Traditional Welsh has constructions as: | | - 16: un ar bymtheg ("one on five-ten") - 18: deunaw ("two | nine") - 41: deugain ac un ("two twenty and one") - 71: un ar | ddeg a thrigain ("one on ten on three twenty") | | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language [1]: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_numerals | froh wrote: | French: cent soixante quinze (hundred sixty fifteen) | gbil wrote: | taking the opportunity to say that the most voted answer in | stackexchange is wrong for Greek, in Greek for example 175 is | ekaton ebdomenta pente (one hundred seventy five) | dr_dshiv wrote: | The Dutch get numbers "backwards," too. My poor daughter | makes mistakes with writing numerals all the time. Like, | writing "27" for tweeenzeventig. Sigh. She will learn | eventually. I'm sure the mental challenge just makes people | strong here, like the bicycling in the freezing rain. | someotherperson wrote: | To add to the list, Arabic also counts the same way. | | my'@ wkhms@ wsb`wn (One hundred and five and seventy) | mro_name wrote: | I suspect that the German way of speaking comes directly | from arabic and the fact that we have adopted the whole | numbering scheme, digits as well the name for 'digit' | (ziffer) sounds like 'zero' which is the key innovation of | the number scheme. | de6u99er wrote: | > And it's not just German either. If you take the word 175 | for example: > Croatian: sto sedamdeset pet (one hundred | seventy five) > Serbian: same as Croatian but in cirilic | | As a German speaker with Ex-Yugoslavian roots, I'd like to | point out that you have a mistake in your list. | | In Serbo-Croatian (former official language of Yugoslavia) | 175 (sto sedamdeset pet) is actually the order in which the | number is written. Only between 10 and 20 the pronounciation | is somewhat the other way around. But like the French | colleague in this thread it could easily be argued that the | numbers between 1 and 20 have their own words because it's | not tri-deset but trinest for 13. This could be because e.g. | tri-deset is actually used for 30, which sounds like three | times ten. It seems Slovenian counting is more similar to | German, while Serbo-Croatian is more similar to English. | | Serbo-Croatian counting examples: 1 - jedan | | 2 - dva | | 3 - tri | | 4 - cetiri | | 5 - pet | | 6 - sest | | 7 - sedam | | 8 - osam | | 9 - devet | | 10 - deset | | 11 - jedanest | | 12 - dvanest | | 13 - trinest | | 14 - cetrnest | | 15 - petnest | | 16 - sesnest | | 17 - sedamnest | | 18 - osamnest | | 19 - devetnest | | 20 - dvadeset | | 21 - dvadeset jedan | | 32 - trideset dva | | 43 - cetrdeset tri | | 54 - pedeset cetiri | | 65 - sesdeset pet | | 76 - sedamdeset sest | | 87 - osamdeset sedam | | 98 - devedeset osam | | 100 - sto | | 101 - sto jedan | | 111 - sto jedanest | | 121 - sto dvadeset jedan | | 212 - dvesto dvanest | | 222 - dvesto dvadeset dva | | ... | iracic wrote: | It would be rather jedanaest, dvanaest, trinaest (at least | in Croatian) - your version sounds how it is shortened in | pronounciation in some regions. Also sezdeset with "z". | de6u99er wrote: | I have been living in Austria all my life. I might not | have misspelled some things :) | jacquesm wrote: | Very close to Polish. | de6u99er wrote: | My wife ist Polish. This might explain it. | bogeholm wrote: | I'll just add Danish: et hundrede og femoghalvfjerds (one | hundred five and four scores where the fourth score is a | half) | | Sincerely, a Dane :) | vanderZwan wrote: | "Hmm, having the most difficult to pronounce/hear phonetics | in the world wasn't hard enough, we should also mess with | the numbers" - the Danes, I presume | mmcnl wrote: | Same for Dutch. | | Honderd-vijf-en-zeventig. Hundred five and seventy. | midasuni wrote: | One hundred Five and Seventy is middle endian, neither big | nor little. | | The only other example I can think of is the american date | system | tlogan wrote: | My understanding is that was the way in Serbian-Croatian but | it died out. I personally knew people born in early 1900s | talking like that. But I can be wrong: it could be just | Autro-Hungarian influence. | | Any real data on this? | mimac wrote: | Then you also have Slovenian dialects, where the number order | is different again i.e. Prekmurscina - stou sendeset pet. | jimmaswell wrote: | If you want something completely insane check out standard | French. 97 is "quatre-vingt-dix-sept" which translates | directly to "four-twenty-ten-seven". Quebec French does this | sanely though at least. | johncoltrane wrote: | No, it translates directly to "ninety-seven" or to however | you spell "97" in any other language. | jimmaswell wrote: | > Literal translation, direct translation or word-for- | word translation, is a translation of a text done by | translating each word separately, without looking at how | the words are used together in a phrase or sentence. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literal_translation | johncoltrane wrote: | I only knew term #1 and term #3, thanks. | | Let's prove that English is insane by making a literal | translation of that Wikipedia definition in French: | | > Litteral traduction, direct traduction ou mot-pour-mot | traduction, est le traduction de un texte fait par | traduire chaque mot separement, sans regarder a comment | le mots sont utilise ensemble dans un phrase ou phrase. | schrijver wrote: | If you're a native speaker I imagine that's true, but if | you learned the language later in live it remains a pain. | I feel comfortable discussing love, art and politics in | French but I still dread writing down a phone number! | Koshkin wrote: | This is so sweet. J'adore le francais. | xcambar wrote: | Also, Belgians do that sanely too. | | 70: soixante-dix (FR) "sixty-ten". Septante (BE) is | literally seventy (seven decades), which is much better. | | And so on and so forth for 80 (octante in BE) and 90 | (nonante). | | Edit: fixed seventy | masklinn wrote: | > 80 (octante in BE) | | Nope. That's switzerland, belgians completely illogically | have kept the 20-based naming here. | xcambar wrote: | Thanks the for correction. | | So do Belgians do it 100% like the french? Or so they mix | a bit of FR and CH? | beardyw wrote: | If your French is bad like mine you can get away with | those even in France. | xcambar wrote: | I hope my french is okay. | lkuty wrote: | In Belgium (belgian french) we don't say "octante" for 80 | (said in Switzerland maybe) but "quatre-vingts" (four | twenty. 4-20). So 87 is said "quatre-vingt-sept" (four | twenty seven). For 70 and 90 it is right. | anotherboffin wrote: | Depends on the canton in Switzerland. To my knowledge | most say "huitante" except for Geneva which says "quatre- | vingt". | Leherenn wrote: | Most people I know (from various Romand cantons) actually | use both a bit randomly, I assume due to the strong | French influence. What's funny is that they don't realise | it until you point it out. | | Octante as far as I know has been dead for a while and is | not used anywhere, in Switzerland or elsewhere. | gregsadetsky wrote: | Sorry, but it's also "quatre-vingt-dix-sept" here in | Quebec. We do manage haha (it's something you get used to / | absorb as a native speaker, although it is of course a | barrier for those learning the language) | | You're probably thinking of Belgium and Switzerland where | 97 would be - as far as I understand - "nonante-sept" | | See this other StackExchange on the topic (and geographical | exceptions to the octante/huitante (!)/nonante usage): | https://french.stackexchange.com/questions/187/quelles- | parti... | [deleted] | huachimingo wrote: | Same in Catalan. | | 80 - vuitanta | harperlee wrote: | Four score and seven-ten years ago :) | alkonaut wrote: | That's about as odd as the danish "syv og halvfems" which | is "seven and half five" meaning "seven and 4.5 twenties", | so 97. | heikkilevanto wrote: | Yes, the "halvfems", "half five", could be translated as | "half of the fifth twenty", or even "halfway of the fifth | twenty (from the full fourth one)". | | Luckily it is only numbers 50 to 99 that work that way. | 31 is simply "enogtredive", as in "one and three tens". A | hundred is "hundred", not "fems", as it could be (five | twenties). | kubav wrote: | German swapped numbers are also possible and correct in Czech | language "sto sedmdesat pet" is the same as "sto | petasedmdesat". | vetinari wrote: | Yes, but it sounds archaic, if you use the swapped version. | kubav wrote: | It is archaic but not in all contexts. i.e. If you talk | about 125 ccm motrbike, it is always "german" way. Also | it is used for human age or dates. | kachnuv_ocasek wrote: | Uh, it does not (unless you're 12 or so, I suppose). | vetinari wrote: | Slightly older... older enough, that I remember Vlasta | Burian's movies being aired in the tv, where it would | fit. | yread wrote: | I use it basically just for tram and bus numbers. It's | more fun to say you're taking the dvaadvacitka instead of | dvacetdvojka. | krab wrote: | In Czech, both variants are possible. The German one is less | frequent, though. | The_Colonel wrote: | Fortunately nobody's going to use the reverse variant when | dictating phone numbers. | jesprenj wrote: | Stupid is debatable here. Computer processors also sometimes | tend to use little endian numbers instead of big endian | numbers. Germans and us Slovenians just seem to prefer | attention to detail and put the most significant digit of a | two digit number on the second place. | | ZRC-SAZU might have some etymologycal answers. | | On that note I notice that I usually misspell two digit | numbers in Slovene. For example when writing a number, I | usually write the right digit before the left when writing | from dictation. Sometimes when I am thinking about a number I | tend to say it the other way around, petindevetdeset instead | of devetinpetdeset, even though I am a native speaker. | elliekelly wrote: | Telling time in Dutch breaks my brain. Saying "it's ten for | half five" means it's 4:20. (I think?) I'm really not sure I'll | ever have a solid understanding. | | Why can't we just say the numbers? Why must we dance around | them? In a game of tell me the time without telling me the time | the Dutch will win every time. | tharkun__ wrote: | There are so many ways to say this in German and we mix it | all the time, though some ways are more prevalent in certain | areas. I'm leaving out the 'regular' version of just saying | the numbers and such and there's also the fact that depending | on situation (or how you feel that very second) you'll just | say 4:20 or 16:20. 4:05: 5 past 4 | 4:10: ten past 4 4:15: quarter past 4 4:15: | quarter 5 4:20: ten to half 5 4:20: 20 past 4 | 4:30: half 5 4:35: 5 past half 5 4:40: 10 | past half 5 4:40: 20 to 5 4:45: quarter to 5 | 4:45: 3 quarters 5 4:50: ten to 5 5:00: | "full" | | I'm sure I missed some from parts of Germany I've never lived | in/been to. | | Sometimes the actual hour is implied in a | question/conversation and you just want to say that it's the | full hour you're talking about and just say "Voll" or "Um". | Same works with "Halb" and "ten to half" if the hour is not | important or implied by context, which you can't do if you | just say the numbers. | | EDIT: speaking of forgetting some. While it's customary to | say "10 past 4" usually nobody says "15 past 4" and instead | uses "four fifteen" (actually "vier Uhr fuenfzehn") or | "quarter past 4" and then at 4:20 it's "20 past 4 again". | Merem wrote: | In some regions it's (4:15) "Viertel nach vier" while it's | also "Viertel funf" because 4:45 is "Dreiviertel funf", | while in those some regions it's then "Viertel vor funf". | | (Personally, I only use Viertel, halb and Dreiviertel, | otherwise it's just "siebzehn Uhr zehn" or something.) | tharkun__ wrote: | I used an English "translation" instead of the German | words for the audience here to understand better. What | you mention is true and part of my list already e.g. | 4:15: quarter 5 = Viertel fuenf | phil294 wrote: | 4:30: half 5 | | Note that to an English-speaking person, this is wrong, as | "half 5" means 5:30. I once tried to explain that logic to | a few Brits, in that the German "half 5" means "half [of | the hour from 4 to] 5" instead of "half [past] 5", but to | no avail. | tharkun__ wrote: | Well this happens if you try to show what Germans say in | another language ;) | | So "halb fuenf" is "half 5". | | Same with the "full" for "voll" and for "um" I gave up. | No idea how to say that "in English". Or for that matter | "4 Uhr 5" for 4:05. "4 o'clock 5" doesn't quite do it, | though I guess it's the closest one might come lol! | davedx wrote: | Dutch is my second language, my kids are Dutch, but they | still sometimes struggle with the time. | | "Tien voor half vijf" (ten before half five) is indeed 4:20. | | "Tien over half vijf" (ten after half five) is 4:40. | | Then when it's 4:45, it's "kwart voor vijf" (quarter before | five). | | I always have to think about it before I say it. | jerrre wrote: | I'd translate it as ten _before_ half five, but apart from | that, yeah that 's 4:20 (inclusive or 16:20). | | I think in the UK they use half five as 5:30? Half past five | basically. In NL it's half way towards five, maybe the Dutch | are forward looking? | DonaldFisk wrote: | There's a nursery rhyme, Sing a Song of Sixpence, which has | "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie", so numbers were | once written out in English the same way they are in German. | | I checked the King James version of the Bible (1605), which | consistently writes out numbers in this way, e.g. | Leviticus 12.4: And she shall then continue in the blood of her | purifying three and thirty days ... Genesis 11.16: | And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg ... | Genesis 11.12: And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years ... | | What about more recently? In David Copperfield (1850) by | Charles Dickens, we still find: About five- | and-twenty boys were studiously engaged at their books when we | went in ..." 'Six-and-thirty years ago, this day, | my dear,' said my aunt, as we walked back to the chariot, 'I | was married. | chabad360 wrote: | IIRC, the original Hebrew also writes most numbers this way. | FearNotDaniel wrote: | I was at school in the north of England (Yorkshire) in the | late 1970s/early 80s and there were a few schoolteachers, and | some old folks, who still spoke this way. | switch007 wrote: | My grandmother occasionally spoke like that too (not | Yorkshire) | | I couldn't figure out why she said it backwards | occasionally | selimthegrim wrote: | Beat me to the blackbirds, but could it have a French source? | | I guess America didn't go with "Seven and four score years | ago..." though | thaumasiotes wrote: | > (sadly, most Germans say phone numbers as sets of two, and | not as single digits) It just makes no sense and I very much | prefer English, it is much more logical. | | German and English are very closely related. Grouping numbers | into sets of two is common in English; it would be completely | normal to vocalize 2514 as "twenty-five fourteen". | | Presenting numbers below 100 in little-endian order was also | normal in English, though that is no longer true of modern | English. | nathias wrote: | Do you have some kind of cognitive impairment like dyslexia? | | We have the same way of saying numbers and I can't imagine | anyone being confused by it. Its normal to just say individual | digits for large numbers in any language. | chrizel wrote: | > Do you have some kind of cognitive impairment like | dyslexia? | | Nothing I know about, no. It's not that I don't understand it | or that my head explodes. I cope with it. I grew up with this | way of saying numbers, and yeah - it's the way it is, it is | normal. But I think it requires a tiny little bit more brain | activity than it needs to be. For me (as a software | developer) I tend to prefer easier and more logical systems. | And the way of saying numbers is one thing that is just more | logical the way it is in English or other languages. | | Similarly, I don't like the way we write dates (28.11.2021) | and much more prefer ISO8601 (2021-11-28). But I think this | is a format people more agree on globally sooner or later | with all its advantages. | nathias wrote: | Ok, so in a CS sense, why would prepending be better than | appending for numbers? If there is a difference (imo there | isn't because of the way we chunk thinking), but for | counting appending is probably better as the significant | part is first and non significant last? Same with dates, | isn't it better to see the more significant info upfront? | You are more likely to be confused about which day it is | than which month, and about which month than which year it | is. | slightwinder wrote: | ISO-date-format is only better for sorting. But for | writting, the german format is far better, because it's | written in order of priority and optionality. This is of | course less relevant with computers today, but even for | reading it still applys. | tharkun__ wrote: | I do wonder why you care about optionality and priority | and what those even mean and how it's better in any way. | I don't think it's better at all. It's different. | | You remind me of a website I found way back for "learning | French as a German". The site was actually pretty decent. | But then it started teaching you the numbers and the | clock and it started off with how the French way of | saying numbers and the time is so much more logical and | better than the German way. I closed the site immediately | and never opened it again and I did not continue learning | French at that time. Stopped right then and there. | | Priority and optionality do not help with parsing written | dates in an internationalized context. And that is true | before computers as well. | | 2021-02-03 is easy to parse as the 3rd of February 2021 | because there's no country on earth that uses this date | format to mean the 2nd of March 2021, otherwise it | wouldn't help at all. | | I'd say that they both depend on context. Let's imagine | the two of us are talking about "going camping this | month". Year and month are optional. If we're talking | about "going camping later this year" the year and day | are optional "let's go in February". Let's say we're | trying to figure out whether to "still go camping this | year or next year". Now day and month are optional. | filoeleven wrote: | Your last paragraph is a strong argument for the American | system of month/day/year. Days lose most of their | relevance unless they are in the current month, so month- | first is much more logical and better, because it gives | the mind the necessary accuracy without the useless | precision. And furthermore... | | Just kidding. Month-first is as crazy as camping in | February. I'm only used to it because I'm American. | Getting us to switch to day/month/year seems more | confusing than switching to year-month-day, because the | latter is different enough to remove all ambiguity when | reading. 06/08/2021 could be June 8 or August 6, but | 2021-08-06 is clear since (to my knowledge) no one has | ever used "year/day/month." | | As you say, this all really applies to full written dates | only, since conversation relies much more on context | anyway. You are forgiven if you stopped reading this | comment before now :) | ajmurmann wrote: | Even after having lived in the US for almost 15 years and only | speaking English 99% of the time, dictating numbers in two- | digit pairs throws me off in English because I'm still | traumatized growing up with this problem. | varispeed wrote: | When I was a kid we had German as mandatory language to learn. | I remember that when learning numbers we thought that the | teacher is making it up and is incompetent. It took a lot of | explaining that it is actually for real. Anyway, due to these | things I never got to learn this language, my brain just | refused to memorise these rules :/ | DonaldFisk wrote: | There's a nursery rhyme,Sing a Song of Sixpence, which has | "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie", so English wrote | out numbers the same was German does. | | The King James version (1605) consistently writes out numbers | in this way, e.g. | | Leviticus 12.4: And she shall then continue in the blood of her | purifying three and thirty days ... | | Genesis 11.16: And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat | Peleg ... | | Genesis 11.12: And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years ... | | What about more recent? In David Copperfield (1850) by Charles | Dickens, we find: | | "About five-and-twenty boys were studiously engaged at their | books when we went in ..." | otagekki wrote: | Similar to the Zwanzigeins movements, in Malagasy, we have | people who'd wish to reverse the counting pronunciation, | although in the public sphere it is virtually unheard of. I | remember debating on forums on how practical that would be. But | IMO people are so lazy they just resort to counting in French | instead. Madagascar has so much other worries as of current | that it's totally understandable in a way. | FredPret wrote: | Actually I rather like it. In my first language it works like | that too. In practice when I count, I say the full word up to | 20, and then start saying "one", "two", until I get to thirty | to save time. This feels more natural given that the full word | for 21, 22, etc is "one-twenty", "two-twenty", etc, rather than | "twenty-one" etc. | lodovic wrote: | But it's the same in English up until the number 20. 16 for | example, six-ten. The English just count differently after | 20. But I could imagine "four and seventy" for example. | nkrisc wrote: | You can do this in English or many other languages too if you | want to. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> Actually I rather like it. In my first language it works | like that too._ | | Yeah, it's easy for you since you grew up with that system, | but as an expat in Germany it is a monumental pain when | someone is dictating you long numbers (telephone, social | security, insurance, etc.) in groups of two over the phone | and you gotta scribble them quickly on a piece of paper since | you tend to write the first digit you hear, but that's | actually the last of the pair you gotta write so numbers get | easily mixed up. | | Example, dictating and writing down 23.45.67.89 in pairs over | the phone, would sound like "3 ... and twenty", "5 ... and | fourty", "7 ... and sixty", "9 ... and eighty" which is | difficult to not fuck up and swap them when under pressure of | writing quickly, if you don't count the same in your own | language/culture, and you haven't agreed over the endinanness | with the other party before the dictation starts. | | So you're left with 2 choices if the other party uses this | system, either you write the first digit you hear, which is | actually the last, and leave a blank space in front, so you | can write the "x_ties" number when it comes up, but that only | works on paper but not on a dialing pad or keyboard as the | cursor keeps moving too the right, or, the other option, you | wait to hear each number pair before you start writing them | down, then you start writing, but that can also causes mixups | in your brain during the decoding of the reverse order from | hearing to writing if the other party dictates the pairs | quickly. | | Or, you just throw in the towel and ask the other party to | dictate it digit by digit and call it a day. | | So, apologies, as I have to disagree with you. It may work | well if you're counting incrementally to keep track of | something, but for transferring non-sequential numbers over | the phone, this is a stupid numbering system that causes more | problems than it solves. | garaetjjte wrote: | >since you tend to write the first digit you hear, but | that's actually the last of the pair you gotta write so | numbers get easily mixed up | | Somewhat reminds me of typical hexdump representation, | where even if data has little-endian bytes, nibbles inside | each byte are still ordered big-endian. | FredPret wrote: | Sounds like you just have to get used to the endianness. | It's actually more consistent; in English, you say four- | teen but also twenty-four. In German, they picked the way | that is most logical for counting, and stuck with it | throughout. | mc32 wrote: | We say 'fourteen' but not 'four and ten'. Fourteen comes | out as one word, like eleven. If 'fiveforty' were a word | it would be easier to process as one word instead of five | and forty which tends to be processed as two words. | jeroenhd wrote: | Vierzehn and Vierundfunfzig are single words in German, | but separate words in English. "Fourteen" (four and ten) | being a single word is actually strange in English | because the language normally splits words like these. | | English has decided to use single words up to 20. Other | European languages stop at 100. Both are arbitrary and | right or wrong in their own way. | | The English word would be "five and forty" because | "fiveforty" would probably mean 200 going by traditional | English (in the same say "four score and seven" means | 4*20+7, not 24+7). | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> It's actually more consistent_ | | In theory, yes, yet my adult brain cannot process | correctly decoding this reversed order quickly, under | pressure, over the phone in writing, even though I | learned to be fluent in German. I guess you have to grow | up with this system so it imprints on your subconscious | from an early age, else, if you grow up with another | system, and need to switch later in life, it's game over. | | Learning this number system is easy, but under pressure | over the phone, this reverse pair system falls apart | quickly as you tend to write the first digit you hear | instead of waiting for the full pair, which is why it's | not used in military/critical radio transmissions, | because it opens the gates to many errors and proves the | system is broken for anything else than casual private | use. | wheels wrote: | I can say that struggle is not universal: I learned | German as an adult, and don't struggle with writing down | numbers I hear spoken. In fact, I'd never even thought | about it being hard. | | Every once in a while I say a number backwards (like once | or twice a year), but I usually catch myself half-way | after spitting it out. | FredPret wrote: | The system is not broken. It works for tens of millions | of people, including over the phone. You're just not | wired for it. Welcome to living in your second language! | | I will say that even an adult brain can adapt to foreign | ways. It does get easier, though in the process you lose | something of your original language. | bqmjjx0kac wrote: | In case you're not aware, your comments come off a bit | condescending. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> It works for tens of millions of people, including | over the phone._ | | Except it doesn't work well, as proved by the fact that | this system is not used in the military since even top | comment in this thread where a German agrees that even he | gets confused by numbers in pairs over the telephone and | as proven by the fact that Norway transitioned from the | _" German"_ way to the _" English"_ way precisely to fix | this issue. | | I see you're very defensive about your culture/way of | doing things, but just because some linguistical quirks | exist to date in some languages, is in no way poof that | they are good or that it works well, it's just proof that | inertia is very strong as these issues get grandfathered | in over time since transitioning to something better is | too expensive for entire countries to make (look at why | the imperial system is still used even though it's | inferior to metric). | | And for some countries/cultures, introducing certain | linguistical quirks on purpose and keeping them was, and | still is, a matter of national pride and differentiation | between their culture and other very similar cultures | (see French vs Belgian French vs Canadian French vs Swiss | French, or German vs Austrian German vs Swiss German), so | changing something for the better would be admitting | something was wrong all along in their culture and would | definitely face backlash from conservatives and purists, | though Norway did the change successfully from the | "German" way to the "English" way of speaking pairs of | numbers in order to fix the confusion issues I mentioned. | lowdose wrote: | In Dutch it is the same way. We even have another word for | billion. Billion in dutch means 1000x more than the English | version. Compounding is translated as combined interest. | jeroenhd wrote: | English has million and milliard [0], but American English | preferred the short scale and that has had more influence | over the language. The UK only officially switched over to | the "American" system in 1974. | | Many European languages have the long scale, English is the | odd one out here, as is Brazilian Portugese if you'd still | classify that as a European language. | | [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale | tgv wrote: | > If I have to dictate phone numbers | | The problem also exists in English: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVPZAXMCasI&t=154s | logifail wrote: | > German here... I hate how we say numbers | | We have three German+English bilingual kids and maths homework | can get a bit soul-destroying when you can see your child knows | the numerical answer to a problem and yet instead of saying | "64" says "46" (or vice versa). | | Our six year old even asked me - just last week - [in English] | "Daddy, why do we say the numbers backwards in German?". Me: | "Umm...." | jeroenhd wrote: | As a Dutch speaker, I think of having the numbers "backwards" | as a neat feature. You can give someone a phone number (12345) | and then verify it by saying it differently (twelve, thirty | four, five). If you verify by repeating the same numbers then | there's a decent chance of introducing the exact same error the | second time. | | English itself isn't all that simple either, because they still | follow strange rules before reaching 20 like many other West | European languages. French even stuck to its base in 20, unlike | English (though "four score" is still often used to say 80 in | the famous quote). The word "million", from "mille" meaning | 1000, is used to express a thousand thousands. The American | system also switched to the short system (million, billion, | trillion instead of million, milliard, billion) and UK English | has made the same switch relatively recently but only because | of American influences. | | I don't think there's any natural or logical way of saying | numbers per se. If there was, we wouldn't have been doing it | "in reverse" for hundreds of years in Europe. | | I can't feel strongly enough about it to be for any change but | forcingeeveryone to change their habits is annoying and | probably costly. You can't force a change in language, language | changes by itself. | BoorishBears wrote: | >As a Dutch speaker, I think of having the numbers | "backwards" as a neat feature. You can give someone a phone | number (12345) and then verify it by saying it differently | (twelve, thirty four, five). If you verify by repeating the | same numbers then there's a decent chance of introducing the | exact same error the second time. | | I don't understand how that's specific to backwards numbers | jeroenhd wrote: | It forces you to stop and parse the numbers because you | need to invert them in your head. For me, it's the same | effect as writing something down because your brain needs | to process it. | BoorishBears wrote: | But I mean in English you do this exactly as shown | | > You can give someone a phone number (12345) and then | verify it by saying it differently (twelve, thirty four, | five) | | So how does it change? | umpalumpaaa wrote: | But isn't using the "zwanzigeins" notation prone to error as | well? | | Zwanzigeins could mean 20 1 or 21. The only thing that | differentiates "20 1" from "21" is the duration of the delay | between 20 and 1... | VortexDream wrote: | Every freaking time a German dictates a number they do it in a | sane way for half the number then do the backwards way for the | rest which totally trips me up. I hate it. | kriro wrote: | I find it more curious that the languages I know best tend to | have special words for 11 and 12 that don't follow the same logic | as the rest. Eleven and twelve instead of one-teen, two-teen or | something. And that even leads to things like a teenager being | age 13+. In German it's the same elf + zwolf and then it | continues with dreizehn, vierzehn etc. My guess is that it is | somehow related to the fact that a dozen is a thing but I'm | curious where it comes from. In French it goes all the way up to | 16 (onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize) before we end | up with dix-sept for 17. French has always been the most peculiar | to me as there's stuff like 82 being quatre-vingt-deux (4*20+12). | And then there's languages like Vietnamese that happily start | with 10+1 from the get go (muoi mot, muoi hai, muoi ba). | Fascinating stuff :) | sva_ wrote: | I was curious and found this rationalisation: | https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/76007/why-it-eleven-twel... | | It's pretty hand-wavey but still interesting speculation. | nkurz wrote: | I was mystified by the parenthetical in one of the answers: | (Please note that "hundred" once meant 120.) | | Seemed unlikely, apparently the ground truth has moved more | through the ages than I expected. Lo, the "long hundred": | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hundred. | barosl wrote: | After reading the answer, I've got some questions: | | 1. I like little-endian systems because adding or subtracting | small numbers is easier in those systems byte-wise. Would the | same benefit apply to human languages? | | 2. Why did the Arabic numeral system choose big-endian in the | first place? It could easily have been little-endian, even | including zeroes, likes 001 meaning one hundred. Who made the | choice? | sdefresne wrote: | Arabic is written left to right, so aren't the number little- | endian in their Arabic form ? | majewsky wrote: | I was going to correct your mistake, but then I understood | that you just wrote "right to left" right-to-left. | sdefresne wrote: | Ooops. Yes, I meant right to left. Not enough karma to edit | and fix my mistake. Thank you. | Koshkin wrote: | Not sure about Arabic, but in Hebrew numbers are written from | left to right. | tomNth wrote: | In arabic numerals , but in hebrew numerals (a alphabetic | numeral system) its right to left. | amelius wrote: | I prefer big-endian systems because you more quickly get an | idea about the magnitude of a number as the bits come in. | [deleted] | emsy wrote: | > The question, why German numbers are "backwards" is naive in | many ways. | | What a terrible way to start an answer. | Bud wrote: | As the comments point out, our counting system in English does | precisely the same sort of thing, often: thirteen, fourteen, | fifteen, sixteen, etc., all name the ones digit before the tens. | And because of logic and ease of counting relatively small | numbers of things. You can tell this is the reason since, once | you get over 20, all this reverses: twenty-three, twenty-four, | twenty-five, etc. | | It's the same pattern in French. Under 20: douze, treize, | quatorze, quinze. Over 20: vingt et un, vingt-deux, vingt-trois, | vingt-quatre, etc. | dredmorbius wrote: | So do eleven ("one left over") and twelve ("two left"), with a | bit of stretch. | | https://www.etymonline.com/word/eleven | | https://www.etymonline.com/word/twelve | gpderetta wrote: | For some reason Italian flips at 17: sedici (16, six-ten), | diciassette (17, ten-seven). | [deleted] | cameronh90 wrote: | I think many English speakers would admit 11 through 19 are a | bit of a weird case. It would probably make more sense if we | went ten, oney-one, oney-two, etc. I imagine most English | people subconsciously treat 13-19 as individually named as 0-12 | are, rather than comprehending them as a composition of two | numbers as 20-99 are. | | That said, based on the other commenters here, the mixed endian | nature of German counting seems very strange to me, being able | to generally read numbers the same way they're serialised on | paper seems useful. | Archelaos wrote: | I am wondering why the English have it only backwards for the | numbers 13 to 19. | jacquesm wrote: | Try French... 95? Quatre vingt quinze. That's four times twenty | fifteen. | | German at least makes some kind of sense. | lordnacho wrote: | It is because little endian-ness in speech allowed market makers | to trade faster. If you have a commodity that's trading at around | 24 or 25, there's no point in waiting to hear about the 20, you | just care about the 4 or the 5. This allowed the HFTs of the old | world to trade super fast and the rest of society adopted it as a | result. | | Just kidding. | | Number systems in different languages get pretty weird. I still | have people asking my why in Danish, 50 (halvtreds), 70 | (halvfjerds), and 90 (halvfems) seem to have the word "half" in | them, and it's half of 60 (tres) or 80 (firs) but not 100. The | reason is the number system in the top half of the hundreds | actually counts in 20s (snes) but that old word is basically | never used anymore. So 70 is half a 20 to having four 20s, which | got shortened (fire snes -> firs). Similarly 90 is half of a snes | towards 5 20s, which we prefer to call a hundred. | | There is some hope though. Swedish and Norwegian are reformed, | despite also being closely related to German. | | I did read a popsci piece about the effect on numbers on kids | learning times tables. Chinese numbering seems much more | sensible. 15 is just ten-five, 52 is just five-ten-two | (Vietnamese as well). In that way perhaps it directly encodes the | place value system that kids need to learn, whereas naming it | "two and half of the score on the way to the third" is just | confusing. Personally I sometimes do times tables in Cantonese, | it seems to recall a lot faster than doing it in English and | certainly Danish. If you think about it, the ten in the middle is | just a constant, so you are only remembering two sounds. Also | there's no converting between the tens version of the number | (fifty) and five. The whole table is just combinations of the | basic 1-9, with nothing in the units if it's divisible by 10. | jeroenhd wrote: | The Danish case (at least for 50) was explained by Tom Scott in | a numberphile video, I believe. https://youtu.be/l4bmZ1gRqCc | starting around the two minute mark. | | The half in the Danish 50 is derived from an abbreviation of an | abbreviation, originating from "half away from three, times | twenty" ((3-1/2) _20 = 21/2_ 20 = 50) using some nice, outdated | numbering orders. He doesn't talk about 70 and 90, but your | explanation makes sense. That would mean there are two ways the | "half" made it into the names for tens! | Havoc wrote: | To make my school life miserable. We switched language of | instruction for maths and science between them at various grades | ginko wrote: | Interestingly Norwegian used to spell out numbers in the same | order as German, but reformed this in the 1950s when telephone | numbers became widespread: | | https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den_nye_tellem%C3%A5ten | | I guess having a dedicated Sprakradet to oversee the development | of the Norwegian language and a single broadcasting service(NRK) | made the roll-out of this possible. | davidkunz wrote: | Reminds me of an episode of "King of Queens" when Arthur | dictates a phone number: https://youtu.be/e_B40_WXDoQ | | In German, it's even funnier because of the 'wrong order': | https://youtu.be/gjPmUUCdLHw (hats off to the translators!) | xlance wrote: | There are still plenty of people using the old way, young and | old. | | I would say I use the old way in all situations except when I | read out phonenumbers. | hbarka wrote: | Taken to its extreme, numbers would be orally expressed in binary | digits or pick your base-n! | danans wrote: | > There are many more languages that speak or read (some of) | their numbers "backwards", among them Greek, Latin (both | directions possible), Celtic languages etc., and of course | languages that actually read right to left like Arabic, where our | written numbers come from | | Ironically, in Arabic numbers are written left to right, just | like in the west, reflecting that they were borrowed from India, | whose indigenous writing systems are also ltr. It goes to show | that not only is there not a "correct" order to express numbers, | but the spoken order need not reflect the written order. | j7ake wrote: | Historically english also spoke numbers in the same way as in | German. For example "four and twenty blackbirds". | dfawcus wrote: | As in the nursery rhyme: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sing_a_Song_of_Sixpence | | That form of counting is still understood, recognised, but | viewed as archaic in England. | | I guess it got lost in the evolution of Old English to Middle | English, and the interplay of Old Norse plus the subsequent | influence of Norman French, all of which bashed the Germanic | core of of English in to its modern form. | filmor wrote: | Numbers in multiple Sherlock Holmes books are spelled out | this way, so that switch must have happened much more | recently. | ectopod wrote: | I know elderly people who still speak this way. It's | changed in the last hundred years. | Taniwha wrote: | Back when the Spanish had driven the Moors south monks were | picking over the wonderful libraries they had left behind, one of | the treasures they discovered was what we now call arabic numbers | - but they screwed up, they took the numbers as they saw them | whole into their writing system. They took numbers meant to be | written in a right to left writing system into a left to right | system without reversing them. | | Writing numbers smallest digits first is particularly useful in | business - when you add numbers together the result can be | written in order, you don't have to guess and leave enough space | for the answer to fit into. | | But it's also screwed us over down the generations - it's the | cause for our computers' big-endian vs. little-endian sillyness - | took us a generation and we finally have decided that, well, the | original arabic way of doing it was right | jefftk wrote: | On the other hand, network byte order is big endian, so now we | typically have a little endian devices converting to and from | big endian to talk to each other. | Taniwha wrote: | Yes, we're stuck with that, at least for old protocols | Zak wrote: | Counterpoint: when talking or skimming text, the exact number | is often not especially important to most of the audience, but | the most significant digit or two are. | | If there are 123 new covid cases in the cycling club, I'm not | going to the meeting; it's not because of the 3 or the 20. | geoduck14 wrote: | >If there are 123 new covid cases in the cycling club, I'm | not going to the meeting; it's not because of the 3 or the | 20. | | Are you skipping because bicycles are SUPER popular during | the pandemic and you don't want to fit into the crowd? | nailuj wrote: | To know the magnitude of the most significant digit, you have | to scan the whole number anyways. Looking for this info at | the end of the number would be just as natural if you were | used to it. | jacobolus wrote: | Yes, number representation should be floating point with | the magnitude written at the front. | tux1968 wrote: | I know it's an irrational pet peeve, but i'd be happy if the | German's (and others) would just stop using comma as decimal | point. | beefield wrote: | I'd be happy to compromise so that Europeans ban decimal comma | and Americans start using metric system. | dan-robertson wrote: | At the international meridian conference of 1884, the French | allowed the resolution for using the Greenwich meridian[1] to | go through on the condition that another resolution promoting | the use of the metric (or 'decimal') system (including | decimal time!) also went through. | | [1] or as the French called it, "Paris mean time, retarded by | 9 minutes and 21 seconds" | raverbashing wrote: | To me is a bit weird, since I learned it that way. | | But the dot as decimal point also makes sense. | | Now, using comma as a thousands separator? Nuh-huh. Doesn't | make any sense to me | | 2'000? Fine. 2_000? Fine. 2,000? It's just awful | raverbashing wrote: | Yes, it's a bit naive to ask "why they were initially conceived | backwards" | | But why it remains as such is just anachronistic ;) English | inverted them back, so it is consistent with the rest of the > | 100 numbers. (ok, the 0-20 range has exceptions in many | languages, so it's fine) | qayxc wrote: | > (ok, the 0-20 range has exceptions in many languages, so it's | fine) | | (ok, the 0-99 has exceptions in many languages, so it's fine) | ed25519FUUU wrote: | "Why are numbers "backwards"?? What a naive question! So | ignorant! What's backwards to you is forwards to somebody else! | Anyway, when Germans studied numerals they decided to write them | backwards in keeping with their written text" | freeflight wrote: | Tbh, as a German I never really noticed this. | | Thinking it trough, it also makes me wonder why it ain't | consistent and breaks down after more than two digits? 21 is | einundzwangig, but 121 is _einhundert_ einundzwanzig, 1121 is | _eintausendeinhundert_ einundzwanzig, and so on. So there it's | not really backwards anymore. | TulliusCicero wrote: | But once you're at tens of thousands, it rears its ugly head | again, _einundzwanzigtausend_. | laurensr wrote: | It's the same in Dutch... But French is even weirder : 96 becomes | four-twenty sixteen... | 3np wrote: | Danish is the worst.. "six half-fives" (6 + (5 - 1/2)*20) | rvense wrote: | This is just the etymology. These words are just words, both | in Danish and French. It's not like speakers of that language | do the maths before saying it. | TrackerFF wrote: | Used to be like that in Norway. Some older people will still say | "two-and-forty", "eight-and-seventy", instead of "forty-two", | "seventy-eight", etc. | | In 1950, the gov. decided that it was time to standardize things | - and the catalysator for this was actually the phone switching | centrals/boards, that argued having one standard method would | decrease errors in the manual patching. Remember, back in the day | you had human operators that would operate the switching boards. | | This change was called "The new counting method", and describes | how numbers between 20 and 100 are counted/pronounced. | qayxc wrote: | Sound a bit inconsistent - why weren't 10 - 20 also changed? | Would have been great to have a language that's consistent all | the way through as far as counting is concerned :) | TrackerFF wrote: | I have nowhere enough knowledge in linguistics to properly | explain this, but numbers between 10 and 20 have their own | unique pronouncement which sound quite incorrect if inverted. | Not too different from English, 10,11,12 have their own | endings, while 13 to 19 end with a "ten" - similar to the | English "teen". But saying "three-and-ten","four-and-ten" | etc. doesn't sound right at all, in our language. | | It's after this that you get "twenty-one, twenty-two, ... " | and up to "ninety-nine" - which can also be pronounced "one- | and-twenty, two-and-twenty, ..." up to "nine-and-ninety". | everydayDonut wrote: | I wish we just said 'ten-four' etc. instead of 'fourteen' | which sounds almost exactly like 'fourty'. Especially over | the phone someone could easily mistake one for the other | oldsecondhand wrote: | Fun fact: Hungarian doesn't have special names for the | numbers 11-19. | frankfrankfrank wrote: | If you think German numbers are strange ... don't even look at | French that require multiplication and addition. Four-twenty-ten- | seven? ... yup, you guessed it 97. | nanis wrote: | https://jose-lesson.com/lin/2017/01/16/nonaginta-septem/ | rvense wrote: | That's just the etymology. It's a word. French speakers aren't | multiplying in their heads... | woutr_be wrote: | My native language is Dutch, but I've been living in an English | speaking country for almost 10 years now. It's annoying to having | to change my mindset whenever I visit friends and family in my | native country. | | In Belgium, we say 25 as "five and twenty" (same as German), | which makes sense, but if you've been saying "twenty-five" for 10 | years, it does throw you off. | WJW wrote: | Not to mention that "half five" means 17:30 in most English | speaking countries but 16:30 in Dutch. | Delk wrote: | I've personally opted to never use the expression "half five" | in English because it seems able to cause any amount of | confusion and misunderstanding among people from different | linguistic backgrounds. | jefftk wrote: | In the US, I don't think most people would know what to make | of "half five". | | (I bet something like 20% of people would think hard and then | decide you meant 2:30) | [deleted] | BruceEel wrote: | and let's not forget our masterpiece "ten to half five", one | of the most straightforwardly intuitive ways of saying | "16:20"... | woutr_be wrote: | I have noticed that I somewhat simplified my vocabulary in | that regard, previously I would say "half five", but now I | just go with "four thirty". | kwhitefoot wrote: | I's ambiguous in British English, at least it used to be. | Half five can be short for either half of five (4:30) or half | past five (5:30). | barrucadu wrote: | Really? Where in Britain would that be ambiguous? I've | grown up here and I've _never_ heard someone say "half X" | to mean "half an hour to X". | mudita wrote: | In some dialects of German they go even further, using | "quarter five" for "16:15" and "three quarter five" for | "16:45". | jeroenhd wrote: | At least that makes sense, telling time in Dutch switches | orientation halfway through the hour, towards the closest | half hour. German does the same thing, I believe. | | "five past five" is 5:05, then of course "ten past five" | and "quarter part five". Then comes "ten to half six" which | would be 5:20. Then half six, ten past half six, quarter to | six, ten to six and five to six. | | It's interesting to see how Dutch and German time telling | is clearly oriented at half hours while English is oriented | at whole hours. | | Now that the world is ruled by digital clocks, many people | will just use digital (24 hour) time. "Eighteen hour four" | would be the current time in this notation, which is a lot | simpler. It's funny how the tool we use to tell time | dictates the way we pronounce things! | TulliusCicero wrote: | I'm American and I wouldn't know what to make of "half five" | in English (I speak some German and it's the same as Dutch | there). To say 17:30 you'd say "half past five". | BruceEel wrote: | Netherlands calling. Same problem over here. Perhaps I would find | inversion a little bit less annoying if it were at least applied | consistently but no "123" = "one-hundred-three-and-twenty"! | gizdan wrote: | My parents emigrated to the Netherlands when I was young. In my | native tongue we say numbers in the same way as they do in | English. My 8 year-old brain struggled to understand this new | way saying numbers when I started school in the Netherlands. I | got there in the end but I recall it feeling like it took | forever. | ezconnect wrote: | It's not weird, the problem is you learned to communicate in | English and learned another way of vocalizing numbers. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-11-28 23:00 UTC)