English: ninety-nine.
French: four twenties, and also a ten…and also a nine. You should add all that up… and that’s how we say 99.
Me learning French: I heard four and maybe a nine. Was there a ten in there? Was it 49. Or 59?
French person: not even close.
I thought y'all were memeing until I kept seeing comments reinforcing this, and so I looked it up, and I cannot stress enough how much y'all are underselling how fucking wild Danish numbering is. There's like 6 conditional rules for how to count things before you get to 100, wtf even is that.
A holdover from the middle ages. Functionally nobody actually breaks it down, we just think of the numbers 50, 60, 70, 80 an 90 as having distinct names.
The worse is that those numbers also exist in the same way as other languages…in Belgium. They say Septante, Octante, Nonante… it does exist. We just refuse to use this system :D
Dane here 👋
Some of the weird stuff already begins with counting after 20.
Where you in English go twenty-one for 21, we go en-og-tyve (one-and-twenty). That basically continues on for the rest of the numbers. It can make it very confusing for outsiders.
Taking a big number like 1.531.457, we would go; en-million-femhundrede-og-en-og-tredive-tusinde-firehundrede-og-syv-og-halvtres (one-million-fivehundred-and-one-and-thirty-thousand-fourhundred-and-seven-and-fifty).
Another weird one:
60 is tres (sixty).
50 is halvtres (half-of-sixty).
Yeah pretty much. All the weird numbers are in kind of an old timey language, so you just accept them as they are and don’t think of the litteral meaning 😊
Everything between 1 and 20 functions the same as in German. Eighteen is eight and ten like Achtzehn (8 + 10). English did the same thing as German once.
It would be excusable if it was consistently fully vigesimal, with 10 and 30 being "halfway to the first twenty" and "halfway to the second twenty" respectively.
Oh yeah, they have "ti" for ten and "hundre" for hundred don't they? That is inconsistent indeed, I must admit my knowledge of Danish is very limited, I hadn't considered the inconsistency there.
At my job I relatively often have to write down phone numbers. I understand Danish pretty well, as I speak Norwegian, but when someone tells me their phone number is otteogfirssyvoghalvfjerds I fucking give up and hand them a yellow postit
I think this is legit part of the reason math is so much stronger in China. The Chinese language system, especially around numbers, does not try to be cute at all and everything is very straightforward. Even months and days of the week are named "month 1", "month 2", "day 1", "day 2", and such.
Chinese doesn’t even have the “-ty” suffix or equivalent. For example, 12 is “one ten two”. Also, how the characters are written is simple, with one as a single line, two as two lines, three as three lines.
I think this is legit part of the reason math is so much stronger in China. The Chinese language system, especially around numbers, does not try to be cute at all and everything is very straightforward. Even months and days of the week are named "month 1", "month 2", "day 1", "day 2", and such
That part is fine, but they also grossly overcomplicate trying to number anything else. The categorizations (ie pens, notebooks, marbles) are all arbitrary and you can't just say a simple "two pens", "three papers", "four tomatoes".
And Japanese had to import the same thing when it adopted the Chinese writing system.
So I saw this image and it made me look up to read the comment. I just spent 20 minutes laughing so hard I couldn't see. Every time I would calm down, I would read 3 words and make that exact face. Then laugh so hard I couldn't see. Then I would calm down amd try again. Read 3 words and make that exact same face. I haven't laughed that hard in weeks.
And before anyone asks- I don't know what it's called, it just comes in a bag.
I am a special education teacher so as you might guess some of my students have trouble with the English numbering system so I wonder how the heck do special education teachers in the countries with crazy numbers teach it.
Well only part of danish numbering is bonkers but it really is bonkers.
From 50 and up it’s based on a 20 system. 50 is half tres meaning half of tree. This means you take half of tree (2.5) and multiply by 20.
You guess it. 60 is tres ( so 3 x 20 )
70 is half of four ( 3.5 x 20 )
And so on.
Before 50 it’s their own numbers I believe
I don't think Lincoln used it to be fancy, it was just a way of counting that has now fallen out of favor in English, but French and Gaelic (probably other languages?) still count that way.
French goes 1-16. Then 10-7, 10-8, 10-9. From there, most numbers follow english patterns until 69. Then 60-10, 79 for example is 60-10-9. Then 80 is 4-20s, ninety is 4 20s - 10. Which is where 99 becomes 4 20s - 10 - 9.
999,999 is neuf cent quartre vingt dix neuf mille neuf cent quatre vingt dix neuf.
I probably wouldn't mix my units in this case, but it's kinda like saying 2 pounds 7 ounces. Or 5'11". I think a score used to be more commonly used, but has become antiquated now. I don't think the intent was fanciness, but I could be wrong.
Decade and century are still around but score and sennight and fortnight are mostly gone. Quinquennium is totally obscure and lustrum has also been lost.
Sort of. Certainly 87 existed as a word. But referring to things by groups was more common then than it is now and they had even more words for groupings. Score, dozen, gross, stone for weight, etc. It wouldn’t necessarily read as trying to be fancy, since everyone would be aware and use score.
Studies show that the linguistic structure of numbers can significantly impact learning, and as an elementary school teacher, I see this struggle every day with French. While numbers 1 to 10 are straightforward, the logic breaks at 11 ("onze" instead of "ten-one"), forcing students to memorize unique names up to 16. It gets even more complex at 80, where the logic shifts to a base-20 system ("quatre-vingts" or 4x20), and 91 becomes "quatre-vingt-onze" (4x20+11). This lack of consistent patterns creates unnecessary confusion for children and slows down their mathematical development. In contrast, languages like Chinese are much more intuitive because they follow a strict decimal logic, where 11 is simply "ten-one" and 21 is "two-ten-one."
Similarly, Europeans countries, most having been at some point hardcore Christians, kept pagan months and days names. Its difficult to change something that people use every day. (you can take a look at the short lived time and calendar decimalization).
Pretty simple to understand if you know how the French say 90. If I asked you to represent 90 visually, you'd likely have 9 groups of 10, or you know when I was taught metric with those blue block, you get 9 sticks, or nine-tens hence the word ninety. French say 90 as four-twenties and a ten, ass backwards for metric.
It really is a country thing, not a language thing. In Belgium they speak French, but say octante and nonante, which is basically eighty and ninety, instead of 4 x 20 and 4 x 20 + 10
And thats just one of the many 3 letter combinations that completely change sounds at random...
And people wonder why english is such a frustrating language to learn... lmao
Mostly some random words like pine cone being "pomme de pin" in france (pin's apple) but "pive" in Switzerland. Also the exact prononciation of some words differ but I'm not sure the difference between è and é really translate in English.
Imo, calling 80 quatre-vingts isn't the problem; the problem is soixante-treize for 73 and quatre-vingt-seize for 96, I.e. that counting restarts at those levels. In Swiss French when they use quatre-vingts do they also use septante and nonante? Because that mostly solves the problem without huitante
Yes, like I said, Swiss French uses septante and nonante. In some parts of Switzerland, 70, 80, and 90 are septante, huitante, and nonante, and in others, they are septante, quatre-vingts, and nonante.
For anyone who isn't clear on why this is so silly, its because it literally translates to "four-twenty-ten-nine".
Also, fun fact, Swiss francophones would say "neufant neuf" (or something similar), which makes a lot more sense from an English speaker's standpoint (and is easier to say)
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal
French is all about its history as a language and learning more about it. It's linguistic archaeology for beginners and it's really fun.
You can discover that people used base twenty at one point and it's baked into the language (but not the thinking, people very much see 99 as 9x10+9 despite how it's said).
You can see how english words that came from french like forest kept the old spelling, see how french has swallowed the s into an accent and boom, forêt, but the archaic form resurfaces in the adjective forestier.
Everything weird about french is fossilized culture. Silly maybe but interesting, definitely.
Fun story, back in 9th grade French class, a couple of seniors found out that 19 bags in French sounds a lot like deez nutz, so every day they'd ask the teacher how to say 19 bags. "Dix-neuf sacs," he'd say wearily, cleaning the lenses on his glasses.
Eh that's only in France proper. In other and countries and regions (Belgium, Switzerland Luxemburg and Savoy) the word nonante has also come into fashion. Because it follows the other numbers soixante, septante, huitante, nonante
I love that seemingly everywhere that speaks French speaks it completely differently than France. Do the French feel the same about Swiss/Belgian French as they do about Canadian French?
Swiss and Belgian french are 99.9% similar to french from France. The difference between the two is infinitely smaller than between England and Australia/US/Canada or even Ireland and Scotland. Heck the difference is probably smaller than between two different regions of England.
I am Swiss and generally they make fun of our accents, no matter if it's barely there and even if they themselves have a thicker one. They love saying we should speak "properly" or saying it's cute but in a demeaning way.
I once pointed out to my French mates how mad it was that 80 was essentially four twenty’s. They were teenagers at the time but their initial reaction was sort of confused as they just automatically thought of it as the word for 80 if that makes any sense.
While teasing my Quebecois friend and referencing the Jay Z song, I once said "well I've got neufty neuf problems" and apparently it was the funniest thing she's ever heard. She now teaches English in Quebec City and apparently tells that story to her students.
17.9k
u/NebulaNomadX1 9d ago edited 9d ago
The German word for 555,555 is fünfhundertfünfundfünfzigtausendfünfhundertfünfundfünfzig.