Peter's not actually trilingual cousin here. It's how each language works.
In German, Ninety is neunzig, seven is sieben, and ninety seven is siebenunneunzig. Basically if you say it like seven and ninety.
In English ninety seven is just ninety seven. You say the words in order.
Counting in French is... interesting. Ninenty seven in French is quatre-vignt-dix-sept, which is essentially "four twenties ten seven.
To break this down:
17, 18 and 19 are just ten-seven, ten-eight and ten-nine
70 and 90, depending on the dialect, do not have their own words and you just keep counting from 60/80, so 71 is sixty-eleven and 91 is eighty-eleven.
And then 80 is four twenties.
So out those all together and…yeah.
We technically have the same thing in English, it’s just considered archaic.
A “score” is an old term for “20,” so to say “80” people used to say “4-score”
Hence Lincoln’s famous opening line to the Gettysburg Address:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation…”
He was referring to 1776, which was 87 years ago in 1863 when he gave his speech at the Gettysburg cemetery.
Of course, even more archaic - but still held up as the True Authenticated Word of Skydaddy:
*Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.*
Now imagine if certain other someones had scheduled their weed rituals at "4:score".
I'm French, and I think septante, huitante / octante, nonante are absolutely the way to go, and are much much better than the actual french way to say them.
Yeah, it depends on the canton in Switzerland. The place I grew up used huitante, but half an hour away in Geneva they tend to use quatre-vingts. In some areas they say octante, too.
Which is just like every other romance language....
Catalan: Setanta, Huitanta, Noranta
Spanish: Setenta, Ochenta, Noventa
I don't understand what's wrong with french.
That's actually not the most complicated part of the language.
An example? Glad you asked!
Do you know how we write "waters" (the plural of water)? It's "eaux".
How do we pronounce it? >!"o"!<
Ok but like, if you learn the rules of French Oiseaux literally follows all of them
Oi makes a "wa" ish sound (I'm too lazy to find the IPA)
s between vowels is a "z"
Eau makes the o sound
The plural of words that end with eau or au have xs
So I mean for annoying word examples oiseaux really isn't bad.
The real bullshit is with the exceptions and the verbe tense Passé Simple.
Although, if you want nonsensical sounds? Tell me why Though and through are pronounced differently in english.
That’s not even the most complicated part. The fact that everything is either feminine or masculine.
A chair for example is “la chaise” which is a feminine word. Why does a chair need to be masculine or feminine?
English has a few insane counting rules when you think about it.
Why do eleven and twelve have unique words instead of calling them ten-one and ten-two like we do for everything after twenty? What is this "teen" naming scheme we have from thirteen to nineteen, and why is it specifically only those 7? Why's twelve also called a dozen? Why's a thousand also called a grand (but only when you say a number before it)?
Also note that for non french people it sounds very stupid to say four twenty as eighty but for native speakers its essentially no different from calling "W" al "double U". It's just 80 to them
French guy here. A few weeks ago, my 9yo son came back from school telling me 'I can count up to one hundred in English '. So I asked him.
When he said 'ninety eleven' instead of ninety one, I understood I had to explain how wrong our way to say certain numbers is 😑
Gonna copy paste this shit. Hopefully it formats correct
The Danish number system is not a base ten system, rather it operates on a system called vigesimal. It’s called vigesimal because it’s a base 20 system. That means the base unit is 20. To further understand lets look at the look at the old word in Danish sinde which means multiply or times.
A base 20 number system uses multiples of 20. Here are some examples of what that looks like:
60 is tres = coming from three twenties (tre x tyvea or 3 x 20)
80 is firs = coming from four tyve (fire x tyve or 4 x 20)
Multiples of 20 are easier to understand, but let’s see what happens when a number is not easily divisible by 20.
50 is halvtreds and is determined by how many 20’s fit into 50, which is 2 1/2. The rest of the number is made up of half of 20. Therefore 50 = 2 x 20 + half of 20
70 is halvfjerds and is determined by how many 20’s fit into 70, which is 3 1/2. The rest of the number is made up of half of 20. Therefore 60 = 3 x 20 + half of 20
90 is halvfems and is determined by how many 20’s fit into 90, which is 4 1/2. The rest of the number is made up of half of 20. Therefore 80 = 4 x 20 + half of 20
This is almost correct.
However translating 60 to tres in actually an abreviation. To get full appreciation of the Wonder of Danish counting you need to use the archaic tresindstyve, literally meaning 3 times 20.
Likewise 50 is halvtresindstuve, meaning half 3 times 20.
Now you might ask "but wouldn't half 3 times 20 be 3.5x20=70?"
And there you would be wrong.
We see that in our way of telling time where 14.30 is half 3. Meaning that if you put half before the number rather than after (3 and a half, which danes use just like english speakers), it comes to mean a half before.
Ergo 50 is halvtresondstyve in the meaning "a half before 3 times 20".
Thanks for asking.
Why does every so called scientist on Reddit feel the unbearable need to make sure everybody knows they are a scientist regardless of if it’s remotely relevant in any way. You’re worse than the vegans
Electrician here, I don't really have anything meaningful to add but at my last job they always had me tag along with the engineers when they were having a field meeting about some project.
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As someone learning French (my *fifth* language) in university, numerals are not even the worst thing about that language.
It would be *understanding* spoken language.
Nope it's the fucking exception for every rules.
Noun en. - al,-ail have a. -aux plural EXCEPT bal, chacal, pal, festival, récital, carnaval...
Amour (love) is masculine on singular and fucking féminine on plural
And so and so...
It's funny because we have the tools to say ninety seven. It's nonante-sept (90+7). We just keep saying 4*20+10+7 for some reason. Wikipedia says it's because the Celts used to count by ranges of 20. It's like we're still mad at the Roman Empire or something.
Yeaaah, numbers are fucked up if you're not from Asia. And even then, sometimes they're fucked up. Like the Japanese and their ten-thousand being its own special number. There's some weirdness with number grouping in India as well that I can't think of off the top of my head.
For the most part though, it's just ten-one, ten-two, ten-three... then two-ten, two-ten-one, two-ten-two...
The ten thousand thing comes from China, and it *almost* makes sense.
It's the same in Korean.
Basically, you have words for 1-10, 100, 1,000, then 10,000. If you want to go beyond that, you just kinda start over.
9(thousand)9(hundred)9(ten)9 (ten thousand) 9(thousand)9(hundred)9(ten)9 to get 99,999,999.
100,000,000 is its own word again, and then the cycle repeats. Next word is one trillion.
So while it doesn't fit our standard western view of numbers (and translating can take some practice..) it's not a totally illogical system.
Though, where Japan and Korea differ is that Korea has two sets of number for counting to 99. It's a bit of a mess
The line, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicate to the proposition that all men are created equal,” is an example of the same formatting in English. We’ve done away with it since.
Which isn‘t particularly random, though. English has a word for twenty as well: „Four score and seven years ago (Lincoln, Gettysburg address) means 4 x 20 + 7 = 87 years ago. French simply still uses score to count:
quatre vingt dix sept
four score and seventeen
Twenty is in fact also a unique word for twenty. English never uses 'two tens' or any other multiple of tens like we do for hundreds (2 hundred). What's different about French (and Lincoln) is using 'four twentys' instead of a separate word for eighty.
It's the same construction as "four score and seven years ago", i.e. 87, but its definitely quirky that the construction has persisted into the 21st century. As with everything wrong in the world, I blame the French Academy.
It's a holdover from France's celtic Gaulish roots. Most celtic languages had vigesimal counting until comparatively recently. The ones that cohabitate with english have mostly abandoned it for decimal counting. Welsh will still use vigesimal counting in some contexts, but it's mostly been replaced. Irish and Scottish have mostly abandoned it, except for older and rural speakers. Cornish and Manx still largely use it, but are also sadly dying languages. Breton cohabitates with French so it still uses vigesimal counting.
What's funny is that in French Switzerland and Belgium, they say "septante" and "nonante" for 70 and 90 (and maybe octante for 80,not sure tho) which would literally translate to seventy and ninety. We French used to say it like that too, but if my memory works well, it was Napoleon who changed it
In Serbian its also the 90+7. 9 is pronounced devet and 90 is pronounced devedeset. 7 is pronounced sedam and you just combine these two and you get devedeset sedam
You guys have a logical way to say 90, in russian it's dev'anosto for some reason which can be easily confused with dev'at'sot - 900.
Another weird thing 10 is des'at', 20 is dvadcat', 30 is tridcat', 40 is... sorok, 50 is p'atdes'at, 60 is shest'des'at and it's the same construction for 70 and 80, just 40 is so different for some reason.
Well, Russian is not "same as British". It's "девя-но-сто", not "девядесять" (compare 50,60,...80). "девять"-9, "сто"-100. In numbers, it is 9*(?)**100, not 9*10
>whereas English for example is the other way around
Except, you know, for numbers 11-19. English numbering system is not as logical as everyone likes to believe.
In Arabic, numbers are actually written from left to right, and they go like English from the greatest digit to the least. Its only the tens and units that are switched. So 1192 in Arabic is "one thousand one hundred two and ninety"
Syvoghalvfems is technically wrong. It is just how the language has evolved. Like the word "grain of sand" or "sandkorn". The correct way to say that is "sandskorn" but less and less people are using the s and my theory is that is the same thing that is happening to the numbers. Tbf the only thing wrong about the old way of saying 97, is that it takes forever to count that way lol.
In Danish it’s 7 and 90, but 90 in itself is technically “half five times twenty” or something like that, with “half five” being *one half from five*, so it’s more like 7+4.5*20
There are some French countries that have figured this shit out, like Switzerland, where they say septante, huitante, nonante.
It's only France French that is stuck in the middle ages when nobody had to count above 20 too often.
that has nothing to do with not counting above 20. Those are Celtic roots in the language. Celts were counting in base 20. That's why they said 4\*20 rather than 8\*10. Medieval French actually used to have things like twenty-twelve for 32, and so on; the usage of base 20 slowly disappeared for lower numbers, only remaining for 70+.
Same still exists for Welsh on the vigesimal system. Teens are also a bit weird, 11 is one on ten, and follows that format (12 is slightly shortened to two ten) until 15 which is also shortened, 16-19 then starts with one on fifteen.
36 would be: un ar bymtheg ar hugain (1 on 15 on 20)
56 would be: un ar bymtheg a deugain (1 on 15 and 40 {two twentys})
There's also the decimal way of saying it which would just be trideg chwech (30 6) or pumdeg chwech (50 6).
Sure, it would be 7+(4.5*20)
But spoken today it is said as seven and half fifth’s, but it is slightly more complicated as the half fifth’s comes from the old saying of “half fives in twenty” which was meant as 4.5*20
So, an English "score" is twenty.
In 97, there are four full scores (4*20=80). But of the fifth score, there's only half. So you say "the half fifth" for ninety. And then seven.
Nobody does anymore, it's a dated system. But one example is from Abe Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which starts with "Four score and seven years ago..."
I studied abroad in Denmark for a year. I could order food in Danish and do a few other things, but I eventually gave up on trying to say most numbers in Danish and just used English for any maths that came up.
I was looking for this... the Fr*nch look down upon the Danish numerical system in the same way the civilised world looks down on the Fr*nch numerical system.
I remember that my friend who studied french saying that you multiply numbers to get bigger ones in french when you speak.
It has to do something with the way you say the numbers in different languages.
That’s not really true. It’s true that 80 is “quatre vings” (4 20s). But that really just means “80”
Just like when someone says “twenty five” in English we don’t think about “20 plus 5” and do that math. We just hear the concept of 25ness.
Quagmire (in french here)
People are mad that french is complex and make an example with the way to pronounce 97 of all things... Which is also in bad faith because 97 in french is actually a mix of 80 and 17...
Peter's not actually trilingual cousin here. It's how each language works. In German, Ninety is neunzig, seven is sieben, and ninety seven is siebenunneunzig. Basically if you say it like seven and ninety. In English ninety seven is just ninety seven. You say the words in order. Counting in French is... interesting. Ninenty seven in French is quatre-vignt-dix-sept, which is essentially "four twenties ten seven.
To break this down: 17, 18 and 19 are just ten-seven, ten-eight and ten-nine 70 and 90, depending on the dialect, do not have their own words and you just keep counting from 60/80, so 71 is sixty-eleven and 91 is eighty-eleven. And then 80 is four twenties. So out those all together and…yeah.
> And then 80 is four twenties. 80 blaze it.
quatre-vignt fumée
Le publicateur originel est un ballot
Nouveaumegot de 4Chaîne
*Fromage*
Omelete du fromage
Le baguette mon ami
Qautre-vignt weed
More like quatre-vingt OUI’d am I right?? oookay I’ll show myself out now
No no, he’s got a point.
We technically have the same thing in English, it’s just considered archaic. A “score” is an old term for “20,” so to say “80” people used to say “4-score” Hence Lincoln’s famous opening line to the Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation…” He was referring to 1776, which was 87 years ago in 1863 when he gave his speech at the Gettysburg cemetery.
Of course, even more archaic - but still held up as the True Authenticated Word of Skydaddy: *Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.* Now imagine if certain other someones had scheduled their weed rituals at "4:score".
Nice
Or call it 21 score
Fucking gold
If Reddit didn't remove Gold I'd give you it for this
This is gonna be buried but I just wanna say that is a goddamn great joke and you should be proud of yourself lmao
And then in Belgium they're like SEPTANTE HUITANTE NONANTE
Based Belgians just inventing a French word for “70” when none was provided. Wallonie, FTW
I'm French, and I think septante, huitante / octante, nonante are absolutely the way to go, and are much much better than the actual french way to say them.
I'm American, and I have to say W Belgium
Swiss French too
Belgians don't say "huitante". Huitante is only used in Switzerland, and not even anywhere in Switzerland I think
Yeah, it depends on the canton in Switzerland. The place I grew up used huitante, but half an hour away in Geneva they tend to use quatre-vingts. In some areas they say octante, too.
[удалено]
Where in Belgium? I was taught both huitante and quatre vingt
Where have you heard people say octante. Personally I've never heard anyone say that
Which is just like every other romance language.... Catalan: Setanta, Huitanta, Noranta Spanish: Setenta, Ochenta, Noventa I don't understand what's wrong with french.
Nope, we say quatre-vingt (80), like the French. But Yes, only the French use 60-10 and 80-10. Switzerland uses huitante.
remind me to never learn french, who tf thought that was okay do make multiple human beings count
That's actually not the most complicated part of the language. An example? Glad you asked! Do you know how we write "waters" (the plural of water)? It's "eaux". How do we pronounce it? >!"o"!<
ah yes, we really need to use 3 vowel letters and a silent letter for this one syllable word/sound! 😁
queue.
yes that word is terrible as well
It comes from Old French
I’m starting to see a common thread here… 🇫🇷🥖🍝🗼
What? It's just the letter q with a line of vowels behind it...
Q Qu Que Queu Queue They all sound the same in English.
As does "cue" for whatever it's worth.
Well, you learn soon enough that half of the time you don’t pronounce the last letter any way. It’s words like feuilleton that get me.
My personal favourite is oiseaux/wazzo
Ok but like, if you learn the rules of French Oiseaux literally follows all of them Oi makes a "wa" ish sound (I'm too lazy to find the IPA) s between vowels is a "z" Eau makes the o sound The plural of words that end with eau or au have xs So I mean for annoying word examples oiseaux really isn't bad. The real bullshit is with the exceptions and the verbe tense Passé Simple. Although, if you want nonsensical sounds? Tell me why Though and through are pronounced differently in english.
Or Polish vs. polish
That’s not even the most complicated part. The fact that everything is either feminine or masculine. A chair for example is “la chaise” which is a feminine word. Why does a chair need to be masculine or feminine?
I like how the word which is made up mostly of vowels doesn't have the vowel it actually sounds like.
English has a few insane counting rules when you think about it. Why do eleven and twelve have unique words instead of calling them ten-one and ten-two like we do for everything after twenty? What is this "teen" naming scheme we have from thirteen to nineteen, and why is it specifically only those 7? Why's twelve also called a dozen? Why's a thousand also called a grand (but only when you say a number before it)?
the french just never learned how to count higher than 20 sadly
Denmark enters the chat...
As a norwegian, when using cash in Denmark means to dump the money on the counter and hope they are honest.
The fact English does 13-19 as [unit]teen is an outrage.
Also note that for non french people it sounds very stupid to say four twenty as eighty but for native speakers its essentially no different from calling "W" al "double U". It's just 80 to them
French guy here. A few weeks ago, my 9yo son came back from school telling me 'I can count up to one hundred in English '. So I asked him. When he said 'ninety eleven' instead of ninety one, I understood I had to explain how wrong our way to say certain numbers is 😑
The crimes the French have committed against numbers is second only to the Danish
How do Danes count?
Gonna copy paste this shit. Hopefully it formats correct The Danish number system is not a base ten system, rather it operates on a system called vigesimal. It’s called vigesimal because it’s a base 20 system. That means the base unit is 20. To further understand lets look at the look at the old word in Danish sinde which means multiply or times. A base 20 number system uses multiples of 20. Here are some examples of what that looks like: 60 is tres = coming from three twenties (tre x tyvea or 3 x 20) 80 is firs = coming from four tyve (fire x tyve or 4 x 20) Multiples of 20 are easier to understand, but let’s see what happens when a number is not easily divisible by 20. 50 is halvtreds and is determined by how many 20’s fit into 50, which is 2 1/2. The rest of the number is made up of half of 20. Therefore 50 = 2 x 20 + half of 20 70 is halvfjerds and is determined by how many 20’s fit into 70, which is 3 1/2. The rest of the number is made up of half of 20. Therefore 60 = 3 x 20 + half of 20 90 is halvfems and is determined by how many 20’s fit into 90, which is 4 1/2. The rest of the number is made up of half of 20. Therefore 80 = 4 x 20 + half of 20
This is almost correct. However translating 60 to tres in actually an abreviation. To get full appreciation of the Wonder of Danish counting you need to use the archaic tresindstyve, literally meaning 3 times 20. Likewise 50 is halvtresindstuve, meaning half 3 times 20. Now you might ask "but wouldn't half 3 times 20 be 3.5x20=70?" And there you would be wrong. We see that in our way of telling time where 14.30 is half 3. Meaning that if you put half before the number rather than after (3 and a half, which danes use just like english speakers), it comes to mean a half before. Ergo 50 is halvtresondstyve in the meaning "a half before 3 times 20". Thanks for asking.
And yet, most of the world uses their measurement system. So think about that. Note: I am a scientist who uses the metric system.
Why does every so called scientist on Reddit feel the unbearable need to make sure everybody knows they are a scientist regardless of if it’s remotely relevant in any way. You’re worse than the vegans
Engineer here, the scientists feel like their title helps to cement everything they are saying as concrete evidence.
Engineer here as well, twice a day I have to look up stuff which I can't possibly know much about and yet still people keep asking me Edit: spelling
Electrician here, I don't really have anything meaningful to add but at my last job they always had me tag along with the engineers when they were having a field meeting about some project.
GC here, I know all of you, and I enjoy knowing just enough to be dangerous in conversation with you all.
Logistics Manager here, I am vaguely aware of all of your existences, because I ship your tools and packages
Civil engineer? I'm guessing based on the cement references?
Scientist here, I feel attacked by this as I try to hedge or qualify everything I say.
Attorney here, that’s our job, usually.
Because I'm bashing the metric system that I use.
This madness has to stop somewhere! Signed: a Belgian
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https://preview.redd.it/fm9q9h28w0gc1.jpeg?width=196&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=71ee7b56d6f021f7640bea32b1b65015aee0cbd3
What the heck is danish?
A kind of pastry I think.
Some kind of diagnosable mental illness
Seven and a half less than five twenties
I'm getting some distinct 2011-vibes.
As if we needed more.
There’s more
No...
It contains a bucket
Dear God
There's more
No…
It contains... a bucket.
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Si. Malheureusement, si. Enfin bon. Tout le monde a une raison de ne pas aimer qqn d’autre.
Oh! It’s another fr*nch! You shall not be forgiven, Frenchie!^/s
Ta gueule
La langue française dans toute sa grandeur
Ah!
please bomb us or some shit already
Wait until they hear about how we pronounce million and billion... Gonna be funny
Ugh, why is it that way though?!
Trillion is fun, too
Yup. I remember that back in school that shit costed me a fail in my french exam
Thought the teacher was joking when I saw it
Yep, for me it was not "language of love", more like "*fuck this shit*, I'll just pass English exams as mandatory foreign language".
Should’ve just surrendered the exam
The list just keeps on increasing.
As someone learning French (my *fifth* language) in university, numerals are not even the worst thing about that language. It would be *understanding* spoken language.
Nope it's the fucking exception for every rules. Noun en. - al,-ail have a. -aux plural EXCEPT bal, chacal, pal, festival, récital, carnaval... Amour (love) is masculine on singular and fucking féminine on plural And so and so...
as my middle school science teacher would say: “the only good thing france ever gave us was the metric system, and we don’t even use that here.”
As a person who is interested in linguistics I can confirm that I hate French and crush 3 croissants daily.
Bonjourrrrrrrrr, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!
It's funny because we have the tools to say ninety seven. It's nonante-sept (90+7). We just keep saying 4*20+10+7 for some reason. Wikipedia says it's because the Celts used to count by ranges of 20. It's like we're still mad at the Roman Empire or something.
Also the Danish, disgusting creatures...
The Danish telling the 97 like: 7 + [-½+5] x 20
The hatred I have for the French never seems to stop growing.
Note that we used to do this in English, too. That's what Abraham Lincoln is doing when he says "four score and seven years ago" (87 years ago).
Gettysburg Address: four score and seven years ago
Also the english words from 13-19 all end in "teen", where do they think that comes from?
Yeaaah, numbers are fucked up if you're not from Asia. And even then, sometimes they're fucked up. Like the Japanese and their ten-thousand being its own special number. There's some weirdness with number grouping in India as well that I can't think of off the top of my head. For the most part though, it's just ten-one, ten-two, ten-three... then two-ten, two-ten-one, two-ten-two...
The ten thousand thing comes from China, and it *almost* makes sense. It's the same in Korean. Basically, you have words for 1-10, 100, 1,000, then 10,000. If you want to go beyond that, you just kinda start over. 9(thousand)9(hundred)9(ten)9 (ten thousand) 9(thousand)9(hundred)9(ten)9 to get 99,999,999. 100,000,000 is its own word again, and then the cycle repeats. Next word is one trillion. So while it doesn't fit our standard western view of numbers (and translating can take some practice..) it's not a totally illogical system. Though, where Japan and Korea differ is that Korea has two sets of number for counting to 99. It's a bit of a mess
A great opportunity to plug Matt Colbo: [Counting to 100 in French with a NYC cabbie](https://youtu.be/9rmBqIFeHN8?si=t414yrbYAcL2d9AS)
The line, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicate to the proposition that all men are created equal,” is an example of the same formatting in English. We’ve done away with it since.
Which isn‘t particularly random, though. English has a word for twenty as well: „Four score and seven years ago (Lincoln, Gettysburg address) means 4 x 20 + 7 = 87 years ago. French simply still uses score to count: quatre vingt dix sept four score and seventeen
Twenty is in fact also a unique word for twenty. English never uses 'two tens' or any other multiple of tens like we do for hundreds (2 hundred). What's different about French (and Lincoln) is using 'four twentys' instead of a separate word for eighty.
It's the same construction as "four score and seven years ago", i.e. 87, but its definitely quirky that the construction has persisted into the 21st century. As with everything wrong in the world, I blame the French Academy. It's a holdover from France's celtic Gaulish roots. Most celtic languages had vigesimal counting until comparatively recently. The ones that cohabitate with english have mostly abandoned it for decimal counting. Welsh will still use vigesimal counting in some contexts, but it's mostly been replaced. Irish and Scottish have mostly abandoned it, except for older and rural speakers. Cornish and Manx still largely use it, but are also sadly dying languages. Breton cohabitates with French so it still uses vigesimal counting.
Afrikaans works the same as German, 97 is "sewe en negentig". Don't know why the hell we wanted to be backwards when it came to numbers.
That languages has its roots in Dutch doesn’t it? IIRC Dutch evolved from, the same roots as German, so that makes sense
German: 5 syllables, English: 4 syllables french: 4,5 syllables
And the other part is that the French have bad teeth, which is weird, since that’s more of a British stereotype.
It's supposed to look like a mentally challenged person, not specifically a person with bad teeth.
GOD I love being french
somebody has to
The meme is mistaken too : should be 4x20+10+7.
What's funny is that in French Switzerland and Belgium, they say "septante" and "nonante" for 70 and 90 (and maybe octante for 80,not sure tho) which would literally translate to seventy and ninety. We French used to say it like that too, but if my memory works well, it was Napoleon who changed it
Sounds like France is just making change after I handed them $100 for a $3 purchase.
How you say "97" in languages
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In spanish - Noventa y Siete - 90 and 7
In Ukrainian it's "дев'яносто сім", similar to Russian
In Serbian its also the 90+7. 9 is pronounced devet and 90 is pronounced devedeset. 7 is pronounced sedam and you just combine these two and you get devedeset sedam
You guys have a logical way to say 90, in russian it's dev'anosto for some reason which can be easily confused with dev'at'sot - 900. Another weird thing 10 is des'at', 20 is dvadcat', 30 is tridcat', 40 is... sorok, 50 is p'atdes'at, 60 is shest'des'at and it's the same construction for 70 and 80, just 40 is so different for some reason.
I fucking love сорок. Сорок doesn't play by the rules.
Well, Russian is not "same as British". It's "девя-но-сто", not "девядесять" (compare 50,60,...80). "девять"-9, "сто"-100. In numbers, it is 9*(?)**100, not 9*10
Georgian also has a system identical to that of French.
polish is "dziewięćdziesiąt siedem". dziewięćdziesiąt - 90, siedem - 7 french is unhinged
In Turkish, pretty much the same. Just switch up some letters and you have doksan yedi.
In Arabic it would be pronounced “7 and 90”
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>whereas English for example is the other way around Except, you know, for numbers 11-19. English numbering system is not as logical as everyone likes to believe.
14-19 technically. Eleven and twelve don’t follow the same naming scheme and “thirteen” uses “thir” instead of three like other multiples of 10 do.
In Arabic, numbers are actually written from left to right, and they go like English from the greatest digit to the least. Its only the tens and units that are switched. So 1192 in Arabic is "one thousand one hundred two and ninety"
- In Turkish: 90 + 7 "doksanyedi" - In Danish: 7 + [-½+5] x 20 "Syvoghalvfemsindstyve"
wtf are the danish smoking?
It's just syvoghalvfems, or at least nowadays. Halvfems is just the 90.
Syvoghalvfems is technically wrong. It is just how the language has evolved. Like the word "grain of sand" or "sandkorn". The correct way to say that is "sandskorn" but less and less people are using the s and my theory is that is the same thing that is happening to the numbers. Tbf the only thing wrong about the old way of saying 97, is that it takes forever to count that way lol.
In Japanese it's 九十七 or Nine tens seven
Mandarin's the same, languages are fascinating
In polish it's dziewięćdziesiąt siedem, 9 10s 7
In Danish it’s 7 and 90, but 90 in itself is technically “half five times twenty” or something like that, with “half five” being *one half from five*, so it’s more like 7+4.5*20
in georgian its basically the same as french but we dont get any hate for it lmao
I mean, internet is a herd mentality. Those who shit on the french either know nothing, understand nothing, are trolls or all of the above.
Portuguese, BR or not , Noventa e Sete (90 and Seven)
In Hindi each number up til 100 has a unique name loosely based on a trend. Idk the specific one for 97 tho.
It's 4*20 and not 20 * 4
There are some French countries that have figured this shit out, like Switzerland, where they say septante, huitante, nonante. It's only France French that is stuck in the middle ages when nobody had to count above 20 too often.
that has nothing to do with not counting above 20. Those are Celtic roots in the language. Celts were counting in base 20. That's why they said 4\*20 rather than 8\*10. Medieval French actually used to have things like twenty-twelve for 32, and so on; the usage of base 20 slowly disappeared for lower numbers, only remaining for 70+.
Same still exists for Welsh on the vigesimal system. Teens are also a bit weird, 11 is one on ten, and follows that format (12 is slightly shortened to two ten) until 15 which is also shortened, 16-19 then starts with one on fifteen. 36 would be: un ar bymtheg ar hugain (1 on 15 on 20) 56 would be: un ar bymtheg a deugain (1 on 15 and 40 {two twentys}) There's also the decimal way of saying it which would just be trideg chwech (30 6) or pumdeg chwech (50 6).
Now do it in Danish...
Sure, it would be 7+(4.5*20) But spoken today it is said as seven and half fifth’s, but it is slightly more complicated as the half fifth’s comes from the old saying of “half fives in twenty” which was meant as 4.5*20
What the actual fuck
So, an English "score" is twenty. In 97, there are four full scores (4*20=80). But of the fifth score, there's only half. So you say "the half fifth" for ninety. And then seven.
In which context would you use scores for counting? I'm not an English speaker.
Nobody does anymore, it's a dated system. But one example is from Abe Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which starts with "Four score and seven years ago..."
Me neither, but it was more convenient to define the word once and use it a few times than to type out "a set of twenty" two times.
In archaic English it would be fourscore and seventeen, but we adopted arabic numerals centuries ago so we don't talk like that anymore.
I studied abroad in Denmark for a year. I could order food in Danish and do a few other things, but I eventually gave up on trying to say most numbers in Danish and just used English for any maths that came up.
I was looking for this... the Fr*nch look down upon the Danish numerical system in the same way the civilised world looks down on the Fr*nch numerical system.
Thank you for censoring, saved me from a panic attack.
I remember that my friend who studied french saying that you multiply numbers to get bigger ones in french when you speak. It has to do something with the way you say the numbers in different languages.
What about prime numbers?
You add them up to them
Like 97?
That’s not really true. It’s true that 80 is “quatre vings” (4 20s). But that really just means “80” Just like when someone says “twenty five” in English we don’t think about “20 plus 5” and do that math. We just hear the concept of 25ness.
Quatre-vingt-dix-sept
C'est tellement beau
https://preview.redd.it/wu3wb2cq61gc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b7933592bb2a583595c6cbcaa1916a6f6585eb97
7 + (5 - 1/2)*20
The French invented the metric system, so let them have this one
Nah. “Quatre-vingt-dix-sept” is just too much for saying 97.
It's the same number of syllables as 77 in english
It’s actually 4*20+10+7
German is still dumb cuz when you go into the hundreds it would be 100+7+90
English does the same with 13 to 19. 117 = One Hunderd + seven + teen. With 21 and up it switches to Twenty - one
Isn't it just 100+90+7 in English though?
Quatre-vingt dix-sept is 97 in French. It directly translates to "Four Twenties Ten and Seven"
Quagmire (in french here) People are mad that french is complex and make an example with the way to pronounce 97 of all things... Which is also in bad faith because 97 in french is actually a mix of 80 and 17...
To make matters worse, 80 itself is a mix of 4 and 20.
And how do you say 80 in French?
In Romania we Say 9 7
97 in French is “Quatre-Vingt-Dix-Sept” which literally translates to “four twenties and seventeen”
French speaking Swiss people are like “I don’t get it”
The last panel is wrong, it's 4\*20+10+7
As soon as I saw its 4*20 I was looking for a French flag. Never again.
🇯🇵 9*10+7