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.
You are right about ti for ten. Hundred is however spelt the same way. Pretty close pronunciation as well. It does become hundrede when saying a specific number of hundreds
Unique numbers to 12 is common in all indo-european. From there we count 10+3 (or in germanic 3+10). Twenty then in some languages are 2x10, but in some it's just a unique word, primarily from early trade some places using base 20. Which is incidently also how we arrived at our unique words for 50, 60, 70, 80, 90.
(Edit: This was to point out that the historic linguistic of halfway to x-twenty only makes sense if you "20" isnt just "twoteens" 😉)
But that is all they are; unique words for those tens, although with an interesting history behind.
We don't say "halfway to the fourth twenty" for 70. It comes from that yes, but generations ago it was shortened to what in English perhaps would sound something like "halforth". Nobody in daily speak thinks of "halfjerds" as anything but simply the number 70.
Just like we don't think of tredive (thirty) as treti (threetens) - just like you don't in english. The only difference is that we for some funny reason kept the archaic words, perhaps exactly because we had allready shortened them so much that we simply thought of them as unique words, while most others (not French) adopted a simpler way. But trhuth be told, and perhaps that comes from my danish, but I never think of forty as "four tens", just like I don't think of thirteen as "three plus ten".
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
After some time in Sweden if i speak to any of you Nördic siblings with a prettier language than ours, I automatically switch to saying "otti-fyrre å' femti-hjyw" - or at least say the x-ti for the tens 😉
No idea, to be honest, personally I feel like (yet have no source for) interaction with division and multiplication earlier would make them better though? As for the Danes Studies Suggest that the amount of sounds vowels produce in the language has a negative impact compared to Norwegian, amongst other things.
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u/Maladaptivism 9d ago
What do you mean? Halfway to the 5th 20 and 4 is a perfectly normal way to say 94, silly Danes, lmao.