People make fun of French numbers, and it’s not undeserved. But have you heard of Danish numbers‽
79, “nioghalvfjerds” translates to English as “nine and half fourth”. “Halvfjerds” being implicitly short for “halvfjerdsindstyve”, which translates as “half fourth times twenty”, where “half fourth” implicitly means “three plus half the fourth” (i.e., 3.5).
That is so much more insane than 83 being “four twenties three”.
and i thaught we germans were stupid with our numbers because we say stuff like “zwei und dreißig”/“two and thirty” instead of “dreißig und zwei” or “dreißig-zwei”.
i wonder how stuff like this came to be, it must have been good for something to have stuck around.
Slovenia also uses reversed reading of numbers. 32 is zwei und dreissig in German and we have dvaintrideset (twoandthirty).
Compared to some of the ways numbers are put together in languages, German is positively simple and understandable.
Pretty sure it’s some very old way of counting.
English used to do it the same way after all.
There’s this nursery rhyme about “four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie” that I can’t remember the rest of. Except that the previous or next verse ended with “rye”.
I think that’s because of Martin Luther. When he translated the bible he basically standardised the German language. So blame him.
Here’s a short documentary on it. https://youtu.be/L5YZSZTO2tk
As someone learning danish now, yup this is hell and the worst numbering system. And no, other Scandinavian countries don’t do this shit.
if it’s any consolation, native danish speakers don’t think about it like this, you just kinda memorize what each multiple of 10 is called. although the etymology does appear a little when using ordinals, e.g. 72nd in danish is tooghalvfjerdsindstyvende (two and half four twenties), but i think most young people would just say tooghalvfjerdsende (72 + ordinal suffix)
Yeah, I actually don’t mind the 10s as much. It’s not that many to remember. But it’s quite fun to complain about :D
Plus we have that whole thing where the only way to know if any definitive noun uses the “en” or “et” suffix (or the same as a separate word in front of the noun if it’s indefinite) is to know already 🤦😄
Grammatical gender.
Which is a thing in many languages. And many languages have more than just the two in Danish.
Relevant username
Yup, am a Danish Dane of Denmark born and bred 😁
I’m a simple man, someone mentions the delicacies of the Danish language, I post this video.
I immediately knew what video you posted and said “Kamelooso” in my head
Stephen Miller walks into Donald Trump’s office, “sir, bad news, we heard three Brazilian people were shot by ICE accidently”.
“oh no…how many is a brazilian?”
It is too late for me to understand that text but I’ll come back at it after I’ve slept.
Thank you Mason for finally telling us what the numbers mean
Mason?
Old black ops 1 meme 😁
4 20
“French 80” seems like a fun way to signal you like marijuana that didn’t cross my mind before.
20 20 20 20
So, four score.
79 is pretty funny in French
Sixty-ten-nine?
soi-sante deez nuts
Yes but it’s about the pronunciation
Remember school where I learned to write number in full text. It’s so long. Soixante dix-neuf I 79 Quatre-vingt I 80 Quatre-vingts un I 81 … Quatre-vingts treize I 93 … Cent soixante-dix neuf I 179
It’s plain math
In French part Belgium and Switzerland, they use something that make more sense like Septante | 70 Septante Un | 71 Octante I 80 Nonante I 90
catra-winged-dick-smurf core
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I get this one
Counting in French ssuuuuuucks
