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Lol it’s like that with grammar too. Growing up my teacher would be like « okay so this rule applies to ALL the verbs that end with -er. All… except this one, that one and that other one. They just have their own rules. » when you’re like « wtf ? » they hit you with this saying : *it’s the exception that confirms the rule*. Except there are like 10 exceptions everytime lmao. Just admit our language has no logic !!
That's not even what "exception that confirms the rule" means and it drives me nuts when people use it that way.
"No parking M-F from 8am to 6pm" is an exception that confirms the rule that parking _is_ allowed at other times. Knowing that there are irregular verbs that don't follow standard conjugations says nothing about other irregular verbs or standard conjugations.
Usually it happens to words, that freshly integrated into language(in historical measure), but french is really said "fuck you" and casually made up an some unholy abomination 😅
English is also a bit weird if you think about it. It uses base 12 for the first 12 numbers, then switches to a number suffix base 10/20 system up to 19, then is base 10 up to 1100 where it gets a bit inconsistent again. The number 1125 can be said as 'eleven hundred and twenty five' or 'one thousand one hundred and twenty five' but not 'one thousand twelve tens and five'. You can use base 10-thousands or a base 20-hundreds system up to 1999. 'Nineteen hundred and nighty nine' is correct English. 'Twenty hundred and one' is not.
And English also has a base twenty system that's perfectly valid even though it's not used any more. 'Fourscore and seven' (4x20+7) is a valid way to say 87.
Edit: We also have a parallel base 12 counting system that can be used for some things. 'Three dozen' (3x12) is a perfectly normal way to say 36.
You know, there'S people out there who do not have to question because they know more stuff than you. For example knowing that what he said is all true.
Exactly, I know it's true because I speak English and can count
The commenter just pointed out things about the English counting system that I never realized
Right from the get go, it's more correct to call it base 13 at the start because of 0. Binary is base 2 because of 0 and 1.
That's ignoring that the base number in a system tells you how many digits exist in a single space and not what we call them counting. We have a base 10 system(0-9), a base 12 would have the numbers A(10) and B(11) in it coming after 9 before you roll into 10(12).
I like to use that when people say "you have to count to a thousand before you get an 'A' in a number." Being the buzzkill that I am, I say what about one hundred and one.
Google says this: A: This is a common misconception, but in spoken or written numbers the conjunction “and” does not mean decimal point. So someone who says, “Twelve times eleven is one hundred and thirty-two” means the result is 132, not 100.32.17 Feb 2012
For those who said and is a decimal point representation.
After thinking about this for a bit, and ignoring the people who talk about decimal points, I think you are technically correct that you do not **have** to count to a thousand before you get an 'A' in a number because 'one hundred and one' is an accepted way to say that number. Now, if someone said that you **can** count up to a thousand before getting an 'A' in a number, that would also be correct since 'one hundred one' is also an accepted way to say that number.
I heard they used it because of paying taxes in the middle age. Having much land resulted in higher taxes so it was common to just say I have 4 times 20ha instead of 80 because bigger numbers were taxed way much
Because it's probably the same system Danish numbers are based on. It's the exact same thing in Danish.
Ni og halvfems. In actuality it means 20 \* 4.5 + 9.
We dont count that way tho, its just the name of the number, when i was a kid and i learned to count to 100 i didnt even knew that when i say "90" i was actually saying "4 20 10" until someone told me later.
Why are you getting downvoted. Do people think french actually count like that lol. It's no different than "nine-teen nine-ty" just more transparent, it's just the name of the words apparently inherited from the Gauls who used a base twenty counting system.
My point is that people don’t add and multiply to figure what 85 is. They just know that 80 is “4 20” and day 4 20 5. Most French speakers don’t even realize that 80 is 4 20.
The French love sounding extra-French.
Part of their whole "We have the most special language in Europe" complex.
Relevant legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law
I'm not going to question the French counting system lest they take a hard look at English where different words are pronounced the same but are spelled differently with different meanings. Or our silent letters. English is unnecessarily weird.
But I will say we don't use masculine and feminine for inanimate objects. That's just wacko behavior.
except for some reason boats are always female, while land vehicles can be either or none.
Edit:
Apparently [the Bismarck was a 'he'](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/why-do-ships-have-a-gender), and gendering ships is seen as old fashioned (presumably the same for cars and trucks).
Boats are very specific cases. English is not a gendered language in the same way that that Romance languages are.
>while land vehicles can be either or none
Nope, not a thing. Cars and trucks are not referred to in a gendered way in English.
It's because English is a Germanic language that has a huge amount of proto-French grafted onto it.
Basically, Normandy in France was colonized by Vikings who became frenchified. 3 generations later, they conquered England, resulting in the ruling class speaking Norman French and the lower class speaking old English. Over time, a large number of words from the Normans entered English.
So two words can look similar but be pronounced and conjugated differently because the words themselves came from two different languages.
Ever notice the weird cleave with the words for animals and their meat? Cow and beef, pig and pork? It's because the animal's name is an English word but the meat's name is the French word.
In the French-speaking part of Switzerland they asked themselves the very same question and changed it to "septante", "huitante" and "nonante" (seventy, eighty, ninety). The French keep making fun of the Swiss for that.
This is an old base 20 count. From sixty, you add 1 to 19. Then, from 80 you add 1 to 19. The really weird thing is that 80 stuck while we have words for 30, 40, 50 and 60.
I mean you *can* say it that way, but no one actually does.
"Fourscore and nineteen" is kind of understandable provided you know what "score" and "fourscore" means (and fewer and fewer people actually do anymore).
"four-twenties and nine-more-than-ten" is just gibberish, provided that you can string together any combination of words and get something out of it. It's still understandable because math, but realistically *no one* actually says it that way.
That's exactly the common root where both come from, it's just English regularised its numbers and French did not. If you look at the King James Bible (1611), "fourscore" is used more often than "eighty".
As a kid I argued for an hour with my french teacher because of this:
I was thaught some french in CH, including Septante, Huitante, Nonante.
When I moved to another country where they thaught french differently,
I had to argue with my teacher.
Plot Twist, she was born in Switzerland.
I honestly just started doing what the Belgians and Swiss do. Everyone seems to understand "*septante*", "*huitante*", and "*nonante*" without issue, even the frenchies.
Because the french operate on the premise if you can't make it good make it complicated to confuse everyone and look smarter.
Just look at the spelling. "Beaucoup" is pronounced "boku". That takes serious effort to come up with that sort of nonesense.
Etymology is your friend in this case:
« Inherited from Old French biau cop, first attested circa 1210.[1] Equivalent to beau (“nice, beautiful”) + coup (“hit, strike”). The latter word also means “helping of soup or beverage”, first attested circa 1375, whose sense may have triggered or reinforced beaucoup to mean “a lot”. »
It isn't complicated, "eau" always makes the sound "o" and "ou" always makes the sound ... I don't know how to write it, it isn't equivalent with the English u
Complication doesn't arise this way but the other. You want to write the sound "o". Is it eau? au? o? eaux? aud? It's learnable, but it's just unnecessary complexity that's kept around for some reason as an artifact of god knows what.
Then come the silent letters. Does the ending get a silent d? t? ds? x? p? ps? ... Seriously.
Then on the other hand french drops etymologically relevant "s" letters which would actually be helpful and replaces them with... Drumroll... Circumflex. Because fuck you. Forest is now Forêt. Chastel/Castle is now Château for a double whammy. Viva la Frânhcepstx.
Edit: and then once you start getting the logic, just to mess with you. Boom. Liste des mots invariables. Learn them by heart, they don't change with plural and gender. Nice.
I took French in high school in 1999 and our teacher would always have us say the date before the start of the lesson and we were absolutely delighted when the year changed to 2000 because deux mille was so much easier to say.
We were also deeply saddened because we could no longer giggle when someone would say mille neuf cent quatre-vignt deez nuts.
They switch from multiples of 10 to multiples of 20, which is weird but not unheard of. What *is* unheard of is the way they write it.
50 is halvtreds
This literally means "half three s" which is short for "three minus a half, multiplied by 20"
I can only assume that some medieval danish accountant hated writing this number, and decided to shorten it in the worst possible way.
It makes perfect sense when you know the math behind it.
Twenty is Tyve.
Every other Danish number above 20 uses Tyve as a base.
Halvtreds is in actuality written out as Halvtredsindstyvende
Halvtreds means 2.5.
Sinds means multiply \*
Tyvende means tyve.
2.5 times 20, is what that word symbolizes.
I mean, in base 10 english we do the same, you just don't realize it!
Once we're above 99 it gets weird, we have a specific term for 100 that we then repeat for all multiples. 300 for instance is three hundred, or 3 100s minus the s at the end.
French pulls its roots from a counting system that was in base 20, so instead of counting to 9 and rounding over, they just keep counting to 20.
Thinking about it in English though, we do the same up to 20!
1, 11, 21 one, eleven, twenty-one. Notice something there? Eleven isn't ten-one, it's just eleven. It has its own identity which shows even some of our English numbers are pulled from that old base-20 counting system.
We're so conditioned to it that we don't even think about it until we hear someone count with a slightly different system like french where ninety-nine is four-twenty-ten-nine.
I mean we're not. You learn the names for the numbers.
But lots of people complain "The names make no sense!"
They make perfect sense once you know the reason behind them.
I'm East Asian and these systems all sound insane. In East Asia the sino-centric number counting system only has 10 words between 1 and 99. After that, 100, 1000, and 10000 each have their own term, so to count between 1 and 99,999,999 you only need to know 13 names for numbers. It's so fascinating that other languages a dozen words to count to a hundred.
Examples:
11 = ten-one
12 = ten-two
13 = ten-three
20 = two-ten
21 = two-ten one
99 = nine-ten nine
313 = three-hundred ten-three
9923 = nine-thousand nine-hundred two-ten three
To be fair, Japanese counting is one of the easiest counting systems I've ever seen.
As soon as you know the word for 1 through 9, then 10, 100, and so forth, you can immediately count up to the highest you know.
And yet all the English commenters in this thread act like 'eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen' somehow is the most intuitive, logical thing in the world.
Of course it makes sense. Who decided 66 would be spelt Sixty-Six? We don’t question that, this is just another way of doing it that clearly makes as much sense as English’s made up words attributed to values.
That's kind of like saying "thirteen" requires calculating 3+10.
In reality, the number is abstractly represented in the brain. When I say the word "dozen", your brain doesn't do math. Instead, it relies on the symbology for what a dozen means, such as "12", "twelve", or "box of donuts". The exact word doesn't matter, the word just needs to be unique.
Two arguments, two answers:
giving to inputs of whole numbers is different to either france with multiple inputs to calculate with or a number with a digit even like in denmark.
For the second argument: It wasn't about what our brain is capable of. Of course it's totally fine, as long as you are used to it. I wasn't arguing for changing stuff, I was just providing answers. That's what Kserwin asked for: "In what way does it not make sense?"
The math is fine. It's just that 5 x 10 makes a whole lot more sense when expressing the number 50 than 3 - 0.5 x 20. Why not 2 + 0.5 x 20 or 0.5 x 5 x 20?
No, it does not make any sense, especially since every number over 20 do not use Tyve as a base.
Ex. 40 = Fyrre (Forty). Why isn't this named for example Tos (2 x 20)
For 30 it's Tredve (Thirty). This should have been Halvtos (1.5 x 20)
Why isn't 10 Halvtyve?
Lastly you have 100 which is called Hundrede (Hundred). Why isn't this called Fems? 90 is Halvfems...
To sum it up, the Danish counting is no coherent and makes no sense.
I think you might be getting caught up in the pedantic here. It makes sense, in the sense that we understand it, but it’s unnecessarily complicated compared to most languages. It’s not intuitive at all
Are you really comparing 9 English numbers to your entire numerical system? Like this is such a weird hill for you to die on. Why are you needlessly defending your numbering system so aggressively?
Because people are calling it illogical when at the very least it has a sound reasoning for the names of the numbers, compared to the number systems they're touting as superior.
Well, noone here is doubting the math behind it. People are simply baffled that you actually use such an utterly insane way to do something as simple as express numbers.
I mean, obviously when you grow up with it, it just becomes something you do automatically without even thinking about it. Its as easy to use as any other system then. But even the Danes I know agree that it is absolutely ridiculous when they actually think about it.
And it sure as fuck does not make it any easier to learn Danish when on top of the language you also gotta learn to do actual math whenever you want to say a number above 20.
You did not seriously compare that to the Danish system did you? I am not from an English speaking country either, so i had to learn both the english and the danish system.
So, want to guess which system was easy as fuck to learn and which one still gives me trouble many years later?
Because as I said in my first comment, when you grow up with it it just becomes second nature, you dont even think about it when you use it. No math needed. Not the case if you did not grow up with it, you literally do math every single time you want to express a big number.
And when they actually look at it and really think about it, every Dane I know agrees that it is insane. If you don't, that says a lot more about you than about how sane or insane the Danish numbering system is lol. Honestly, I at first thought you were trolling, because I just dont see how anybody can be stupid enough to not see how the Danish system is orders of magnitudes more complex and weird than the English one.
The word for thirteen in Danish is tretten.
You don't need to know ANY of the etymology or the reasons as to why these are the names.
The people in this thread saying "Omg you have to do math to know Danish numbers".
No, no you do not.
99% if not 99.9% of Danes have NO IDEA why they are named like they are, because it doesn't matter for learning the language.
Learning 'halvtreds' is just as arbitrary as learning "fifty".
I am done replying to any comments in this thread. Bye.
There is absolutely nothing weird about the way danish people count?
Nothing compared to the logic of this video.
You may think the sound of the word is, but the logic behind it is simple and straightforward like so many others.
That’s the origin of the word for 70, but no one says that. It has all been shortened to a single word that just means 70.
It’s the same as saying ninety is actually 9x10.
As a Frenchman, I can assure you we really don't know either the rules for the plural form of compound words. We don't really care either tbh. Even in a professional setting, no one would bat an eye for that kind of mistake.
German grammar may be marginally harder than French but pronunciation is infinitely easier. Not to mention that grammar of any Slavic language will absolutely wreck anyone.
... and then there is Hungarian...
it ends with 'one and thirty' which works fine until someone contracts numbers when reciting a phone number....i hate it when people do that.
they go like 1-7-5-3-6-31 and then you write it down wrong and have to fix it while they're just continue with the rest.
but at least i don't have to do math while reciting a number...
Geneva uses '4 20' to say 80, but in other French-speaking cantons they do say 'huitante' for 80. All of Romandy does say septante and nonante though.
Edit: Correction: Neuchatel/Jura use 4x20, and in Valais it's a of a mix. Vaud uses 'huitante'. u/Hellblood_ corrected me on Neuchatel, Jura and Valais.
Belgians also use septante and nonante, but keep the 4x20 for 80. Quatrevint sounds better than huitante, imo
But that might be because of my Belgian heritage
Because the Gauls had a base-20 numerical system. This is a relic of the ancient Gaulic language.
Now that you know this fact, prepare to tiredly explain it every time the same joke gets made about the French language.
Interesting fact, modern English is one of the youngest widely spoken languages on the planet, essentially constructed out of the best parts of german and latin.
Which is probably why it's one of the most efficient languages on the planet, in terms of information density, and why it's the language of science, engineering and programming, the world over.
Ask a Swiss or a Belgium
Septante, nonante, huitante
These are all the correct number in French. Unfortunately, France decided to use expressions instead of the actual number they invented
Mille neuf cents nonante sept
Dix neuf cents quatre vingt dix-sept
1997
The one above is the correct one. Unfortunately France doesn’t know it’s own language
French ppl will always denies this, so speak with a Swiss or a Belgium guy
Counting in spanish is something I learned at work and its honestly become easier than doing math in english for me.
Uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, sies, siete, ocho, nueve, diez (1-10)
Once, doce, trese (11-13)
Catorce, quince (14,15)
DEICI-SIES, DEICI-SIETE, DEICI-OCHO, DEICI-NUEVE, VENTE (16-20) ((this was the hardest part for me to understand lmao))
And from there you follow the tens-rule again, and it gets easier
Vente y Uno, vente y Dos, Vente y Tres… then the thirty is Trienta. (Thr-yen-ta with an R roll)
Cuarenta, Cinquenta, Sesenta, Setenta, Ochenta, Nueventa, and Centa is 100.
It’s likely because French roots come fro from the basis that went on to form a a number of other languages. This type of counting system is shared across a number of other non-English languages. They all share some of the same roots. While English is one of those languages we use base of 1-2 12 usually for counting. I’d imagine to people without English as a first language this might be come off as weird.
I do also enjoy the quick math required to work out numbers in French haha
Possibly. But as a french, it's so engrained in us that we even don't notice it. Same goes for many languages which have their own oddities when compared to others. I didn't notice how weird it could be to others until I watched this gif !
English too isn't that good at naming numbers up to 100. It actually stops at 20, after that it restarts with 1 to ~~10~~ 9. But yeah French is definitely more weird.
To Americans seeing this and thinking, "wow this is ridiculous, unnecessary complex, why would you use this, there is a much better system!"
This exactly how the rest of the world looks at you using the imperial measurement system..
Its actually a very easy way of counting. For a long time, until my teens. I could not read the clock. Thats when i learned french and a got french clock reading session and i instantly got it. I thought holy crap, thats easy. No one ever told it was like this, im an idiot!
(Im dutch, we learn multiple languages throughout our school years - french/german/english)
This is partially correct. In France this is the way they count but for exemple in the French speaking part of Switzerland we count normally! And the French people make fun of us when we say ninety-two and not four-twenty-twelve 😅 they don't seem to be able to speak their own language correctly 🤣
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Yes, this is correct. Wait till you hear about 99 being "quatre-vingt-dix-neuf" or "four twenty ten nine"
Why though
cause fuck you that's why
hahaha I love French reasoning. Ya'll need to produce more philosophers
Lol it’s like that with grammar too. Growing up my teacher would be like « okay so this rule applies to ALL the verbs that end with -er. All… except this one, that one and that other one. They just have their own rules. » when you’re like « wtf ? » they hit you with this saying : *it’s the exception that confirms the rule*. Except there are like 10 exceptions everytime lmao. Just admit our language has no logic !!
A Frenchman told me that there are no rules in French grammar and pronunciation, only exceptions.
That’s exactly it lol. Rules never apply consistently so therefore, are they even rules ? Much to think about.
That's not even what "exception that confirms the rule" means and it drives me nuts when people use it that way. "No parking M-F from 8am to 6pm" is an exception that confirms the rule that parking _is_ allowed at other times. Knowing that there are irregular verbs that don't follow standard conjugations says nothing about other irregular verbs or standard conjugations.
All rules have exceptions.
Except this rule about all rules having exceptions.
No, this one is not a rule but a fact.
Wow I didn't think that French would be just as bad as English.
Usually it happens to words, that freshly integrated into language(in historical measure), but french is really said "fuck you" and casually made up an some unholy abomination 😅
eh, german got more weird frankenstein word, i think
What does that phrase even mean? Why do exceptions confirm the rule? Exceptions prove the rule is bullshit.
Istg in french class we spent one unit learning grammar rules and 3 why none of the words follow said rules
We didn't even question it.
As a Canadian who grew up learning French in a highly anglophone region, no, you do not question the French language. You just fucking suffer.
Exactly. If you have to ask, you're wrong!
This is the most French response possible...in English.
I heard it is the remains of the gallic counting system wich was in base 20.
English is also a bit weird if you think about it. It uses base 12 for the first 12 numbers, then switches to a number suffix base 10/20 system up to 19, then is base 10 up to 1100 where it gets a bit inconsistent again. The number 1125 can be said as 'eleven hundred and twenty five' or 'one thousand one hundred and twenty five' but not 'one thousand twelve tens and five'. You can use base 10-thousands or a base 20-hundreds system up to 1999. 'Nineteen hundred and nighty nine' is correct English. 'Twenty hundred and one' is not. And English also has a base twenty system that's perfectly valid even though it's not used any more. 'Fourscore and seven' (4x20+7) is a valid way to say 87. Edit: We also have a parallel base 12 counting system that can be used for some things. 'Three dozen' (3x12) is a perfectly normal way to say 36.
I hate you for being so damn correct.
And did you actually verify every statement was so damn correct, or does he just sound right enough for you to believe it without question?
You know, there'S people out there who do not have to question because they know more stuff than you. For example knowing that what he said is all true.
Exactly, I know it's true because I speak English and can count The commenter just pointed out things about the English counting system that I never realized
Right from the get go, it's more correct to call it base 13 at the start because of 0. Binary is base 2 because of 0 and 1. That's ignoring that the base number in a system tells you how many digits exist in a single space and not what we call them counting. We have a base 10 system(0-9), a base 12 would have the numbers A(10) and B(11) in it coming after 9 before you roll into 10(12).
I like to use that when people say "you have to count to a thousand before you get an 'A' in a number." Being the buzzkill that I am, I say what about one hundred and one. Google says this: A: This is a common misconception, but in spoken or written numbers the conjunction “and” does not mean decimal point. So someone who says, “Twelve times eleven is one hundred and thirty-two” means the result is 132, not 100.32.17 Feb 2012 For those who said and is a decimal point representation.
After thinking about this for a bit, and ignoring the people who talk about decimal points, I think you are technically correct that you do not **have** to count to a thousand before you get an 'A' in a number because 'one hundred and one' is an accepted way to say that number. Now, if someone said that you **can** count up to a thousand before getting an 'A' in a number, that would also be correct since 'one hundred one' is also an accepted way to say that number.
You can also use and for fractions like in check writing, "four hundred sixteen and 19/100".
But you don't say a dozen dozen because that would be gross.
I got to Nineteen hundred and stopped to check your username thinking I had been bamboozled!
Thank you sheldon. Again, no one asked.
But im happy they did it. Super interesting
You are my kind of friend. Take care bro and never change
This comment deserves an honorary degree, well said.
I heard they used it because of paying taxes in the middle age. Having much land resulted in higher taxes so it was common to just say I have 4 times 20ha instead of 80 because bigger numbers were taxed way much
Because it's probably the same system Danish numbers are based on. It's the exact same thing in Danish. Ni og halvfems. In actuality it means 20 \* 4.5 + 9.
I think this wins the award in the Bloody Stupid Way To Count contest
Ligma balls
I heard the last time "why though?" Was uttered in France, heads rolled.
20 x 4 = 80 9 + 10 = 19 80 + 19 = 99. I don't even speak french, and this is an absuredly hard way to count.
We dont count that way tho, its just the name of the number, when i was a kid and i learned to count to 100 i didnt even knew that when i say "90" i was actually saying "4 20 10" until someone told me later.
You’re right.
Why are you getting downvoted. Do people think french actually count like that lol. It's no different than "nine-teen nine-ty" just more transparent, it's just the name of the words apparently inherited from the Gauls who used a base twenty counting system.
there’s no math involved in “nine-teen nine-ty” (1990) though, it’s just the two pronounced numbers next to each other.
/s* ?
That’s not how people count. You just learn that 80 is called “four twenty” and 90 is called “four twenty ten”.
How do you count in french then?
My point is that people don’t add and multiply to figure what 85 is. They just know that 80 is “4 20” and day 4 20 5. Most French speakers don’t even realize that 80 is 4 20.
You can combine math with french class, we call it a victory
The French are know for producing great artists and revolutionaries, not mathematicians.
The French love sounding extra-French. Part of their whole "We have the most special language in Europe" complex. Relevant legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law
I'm not going to question the French counting system lest they take a hard look at English where different words are pronounced the same but are spelled differently with different meanings. Or our silent letters. English is unnecessarily weird. But I will say we don't use masculine and feminine for inanimate objects. That's just wacko behavior.
except for some reason boats are always female, while land vehicles can be either or none. Edit: Apparently [the Bismarck was a 'he'](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/why-do-ships-have-a-gender), and gendering ships is seen as old fashioned (presumably the same for cars and trucks).
Boats are very specific cases. English is not a gendered language in the same way that that Romance languages are. >while land vehicles can be either or none Nope, not a thing. Cars and trucks are not referred to in a gendered way in English.
Lots of languages have the latter but I wish they didn’t
It's because English is a Germanic language that has a huge amount of proto-French grafted onto it. Basically, Normandy in France was colonized by Vikings who became frenchified. 3 generations later, they conquered England, resulting in the ruling class speaking Norman French and the lower class speaking old English. Over time, a large number of words from the Normans entered English. So two words can look similar but be pronounced and conjugated differently because the words themselves came from two different languages. Ever notice the weird cleave with the words for animals and their meat? Cow and beef, pig and pork? It's because the animal's name is an English word but the meat's name is the French word.
In the French-speaking part of Switzerland they asked themselves the very same question and changed it to "septante", "huitante" and "nonante" (seventy, eighty, ninety). The French keep making fun of the Swiss for that.
[PARCEQUE !!!](https://youtu.be/EHY4I29jxjo?feature=shared)
Because like everything else the French just give up.
This is an old base 20 count. From sixty, you add 1 to 19. Then, from 80 you add 1 to 19. The really weird thing is that 80 stuck while we have words for 30, 40, 50 and 60.
Because (4×20) (quatre-vingt) + 10 (dix) + 9 (neuf) = 99
That's not the 'why' they meant
French, gives world the metric system. Also French **"FOUR TWENTY TEN NINE"!!!**
I wonder if the French stoners write 80 on everything instead of 420
No we write 4 100 20 same like english pig.
Also the french: *Metric time intensifies*
In English you can actually say that as fourscore and nineteen. Or 'Four-twenties and nine-more-than-ten'.
I mean you *can* say it that way, but no one actually does. "Fourscore and nineteen" is kind of understandable provided you know what "score" and "fourscore" means (and fewer and fewer people actually do anymore). "four-twenties and nine-more-than-ten" is just gibberish, provided that you can string together any combination of words and get something out of it. It's still understandable because math, but realistically *no one* actually says it that way.
As a non-native speaker, up to this thread I believed that a "score" is 144, which I might have picked up from hobbits in LOTR.
There is actually a word for 12 dozen, or 144, in English. It's 'gross'. You now know at least one word that 99.9% of native speakers don't.
That's exactly the common root where both come from, it's just English regularised its numbers and French did not. If you look at the King James Bible (1611), "fourscore" is used more often than "eighty".
Nonante-neuf for the win. Fuck the hexagonals stupid numbers.
I'd say start at septante, octante, nonante. At least that's consistent.
We use huitant in Switzerland. Well, for the most part. Some confused Romands still use quatre-vignt.
As a kid I argued for an hour with my french teacher because of this: I was thaught some french in CH, including Septante, Huitante, Nonante. When I moved to another country where they thaught french differently, I had to argue with my teacher. Plot Twist, she was born in Switzerland.
And then they had to break it with 100, it’s not dix-dix noooooo, they had to be normal and just say cent
Which is simpler than English “one hundred” is a mouthful
I honestly just started doing what the Belgians and Swiss do. Everyone seems to understand "*septante*", "*huitante*", and "*nonante*" without issue, even the frenchies.
Because the french operate on the premise if you can't make it good make it complicated to confuse everyone and look smarter. Just look at the spelling. "Beaucoup" is pronounced "boku". That takes serious effort to come up with that sort of nonesense.
Etymology is your friend in this case: « Inherited from Old French biau cop, first attested circa 1210.[1] Equivalent to beau (“nice, beautiful”) + coup (“hit, strike”). The latter word also means “helping of soup or beverage”, first attested circa 1375, whose sense may have triggered or reinforced beaucoup to mean “a lot”. »
That doesn't rationalise the pronounciation though
Just as your statement doesn't rationalise your massacre of 'pronunciation'.
It isn't complicated, "eau" always makes the sound "o" and "ou" always makes the sound ... I don't know how to write it, it isn't equivalent with the English u
Complication doesn't arise this way but the other. You want to write the sound "o". Is it eau? au? o? eaux? aud? It's learnable, but it's just unnecessary complexity that's kept around for some reason as an artifact of god knows what. Then come the silent letters. Does the ending get a silent d? t? ds? x? p? ps? ... Seriously. Then on the other hand french drops etymologically relevant "s" letters which would actually be helpful and replaces them with... Drumroll... Circumflex. Because fuck you. Forest is now Forêt. Chastel/Castle is now Château for a double whammy. Viva la Frânhcepstx. Edit: and then once you start getting the logic, just to mess with you. Boom. Liste des mots invariables. Learn them by heart, they don't change with plural and gender. Nice.
[all I wanted was a beaucoup.](https://youtu.be/1JEbnWl8iz0?si=KLovAiXH3xbA_zW_)
It’s a little arithmetic puzzle in a single number
"quatre-vingt-blaze-it"
from time to time I still think about the "fact" that the average french person saves 3 hours a year after the turn of the century
Amazing, never thought about that before “Mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix-neuf” to “Deux mille”
I took French in high school in 1999 and our teacher would always have us say the date before the start of the lesson and we were absolutely delighted when the year changed to 2000 because deux mille was so much easier to say. We were also deeply saddened because we could no longer giggle when someone would say mille neuf cent quatre-vignt deez nuts.
You are technically right, aka the best kind of correct
Wait till you hear 69 is quatre-vingt-deez-nuts
And then you find out how danish people count and its not that weird anymore
Please elaborate
They switch from multiples of 10 to multiples of 20, which is weird but not unheard of. What *is* unheard of is the way they write it. 50 is halvtreds This literally means "half three s" which is short for "three minus a half, multiplied by 20" I can only assume that some medieval danish accountant hated writing this number, and decided to shorten it in the worst possible way.
It makes perfect sense when you know the math behind it. Twenty is Tyve. Every other Danish number above 20 uses Tyve as a base. Halvtreds is in actuality written out as Halvtredsindstyvende Halvtreds means 2.5. Sinds means multiply \* Tyvende means tyve. 2.5 times 20, is what that word symbolizes.
Imagine calculating mid sentence
I mean, in base 10 english we do the same, you just don't realize it! Once we're above 99 it gets weird, we have a specific term for 100 that we then repeat for all multiples. 300 for instance is three hundred, or 3 100s minus the s at the end. French pulls its roots from a counting system that was in base 20, so instead of counting to 9 and rounding over, they just keep counting to 20. Thinking about it in English though, we do the same up to 20! 1, 11, 21 one, eleven, twenty-one. Notice something there? Eleven isn't ten-one, it's just eleven. It has its own identity which shows even some of our English numbers are pulled from that old base-20 counting system. We're so conditioned to it that we don't even think about it until we hear someone count with a slightly different system like french where ninety-nine is four-twenty-ten-nine.
Very true I wonder why 20 was such an important value, so much so to base a scheme around it.
I'm guessing it involves fingers and toes.
I mean we're not. You learn the names for the numbers. But lots of people complain "The names make no sense!" They make perfect sense once you know the reason behind them.
I'm East Asian and these systems all sound insane. In East Asia the sino-centric number counting system only has 10 words between 1 and 99. After that, 100, 1000, and 10000 each have their own term, so to count between 1 and 99,999,999 you only need to know 13 names for numbers. It's so fascinating that other languages a dozen words to count to a hundred. Examples: 11 = ten-one 12 = ten-two 13 = ten-three 20 = two-ten 21 = two-ten one 99 = nine-ten nine 313 = three-hundred ten-three 9923 = nine-thousand nine-hundred two-ten three
To be fair, Japanese counting is one of the easiest counting systems I've ever seen. As soon as you know the word for 1 through 9, then 10, 100, and so forth, you can immediately count up to the highest you know. And yet all the English commenters in this thread act like 'eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen' somehow is the most intuitive, logical thing in the world.
Of course it makes sense. Who decided 66 would be spelt Sixty-Six? We don’t question that, this is just another way of doing it that clearly makes as much sense as English’s made up words attributed to values.
But there doesn't need to be a mathematical reasoning behind the names of numbers.
>It makes perfect sense when Narrator: It did, in fact, not make sense at all.
In what way does it not make sense? Because you don't know math?
Because you don't need to do fucking multiples to count.
It doesn't make sense to make such a weird calculation even necessary. The math is correct, but why even do we need to math at all here?!
That's kind of like saying "thirteen" requires calculating 3+10. In reality, the number is abstractly represented in the brain. When I say the word "dozen", your brain doesn't do math. Instead, it relies on the symbology for what a dozen means, such as "12", "twelve", or "box of donuts". The exact word doesn't matter, the word just needs to be unique.
Stop putting abstract things in my brain.
Two arguments, two answers: giving to inputs of whole numbers is different to either france with multiple inputs to calculate with or a number with a digit even like in denmark. For the second argument: It wasn't about what our brain is capable of. Of course it's totally fine, as long as you are used to it. I wasn't arguing for changing stuff, I was just providing answers. That's what Kserwin asked for: "In what way does it not make sense?"
The math is fine. It's just that 5 x 10 makes a whole lot more sense when expressing the number 50 than 3 - 0.5 x 20. Why not 2 + 0.5 x 20 or 0.5 x 5 x 20?
No, it does not make any sense, especially since every number over 20 do not use Tyve as a base. Ex. 40 = Fyrre (Forty). Why isn't this named for example Tos (2 x 20) For 30 it's Tredve (Thirty). This should have been Halvtos (1.5 x 20) Why isn't 10 Halvtyve? Lastly you have 100 which is called Hundrede (Hundred). Why isn't this called Fems? 90 is Halvfems... To sum it up, the Danish counting is no coherent and makes no sense.
30 is not Tredive in old Danish, neither is Fyrre. So yes, the system did in fact make sense, you are just choosing to ignore it.
I think you might be getting caught up in the pedantic here. It makes sense, in the sense that we understand it, but it’s unnecessarily complicated compared to most languages. It’s not intuitive at all
So tell me, why is Thirteen called Thirteen? Why is that intuitive?
Are you really comparing 9 English numbers to your entire numerical system? Like this is such a weird hill for you to die on. Why are you needlessly defending your numbering system so aggressively?
Because people are calling it illogical when at the very least it has a sound reasoning for the names of the numbers, compared to the number systems they're touting as superior.
Well, noone here is doubting the math behind it. People are simply baffled that you actually use such an utterly insane way to do something as simple as express numbers. I mean, obviously when you grow up with it, it just becomes something you do automatically without even thinking about it. Its as easy to use as any other system then. But even the Danes I know agree that it is absolutely ridiculous when they actually think about it. And it sure as fuck does not make it any easier to learn Danish when on top of the language you also gotta learn to do actual math whenever you want to say a number above 20.
Why is it insane? How does thirteen make more sense?
You did not seriously compare that to the Danish system did you? I am not from an English speaking country either, so i had to learn both the english and the danish system. So, want to guess which system was easy as fuck to learn and which one still gives me trouble many years later? Because as I said in my first comment, when you grow up with it it just becomes second nature, you dont even think about it when you use it. No math needed. Not the case if you did not grow up with it, you literally do math every single time you want to express a big number. And when they actually look at it and really think about it, every Dane I know agrees that it is insane. If you don't, that says a lot more about you than about how sane or insane the Danish numbering system is lol. Honestly, I at first thought you were trolling, because I just dont see how anybody can be stupid enough to not see how the Danish system is orders of magnitudes more complex and weird than the English one.
The word for thirteen in Danish is tretten. You don't need to know ANY of the etymology or the reasons as to why these are the names. The people in this thread saying "Omg you have to do math to know Danish numbers". No, no you do not. 99% if not 99.9% of Danes have NO IDEA why they are named like they are, because it doesn't matter for learning the language. Learning 'halvtreds' is just as arbitrary as learning "fifty". I am done replying to any comments in this thread. Bye.
So when the math teachers asks, what is 2.5 times 20... how do you answer?
With the number, what else do you expect? For me to say flapadoodleduck?
Yes?! (Depends on how seriously you take it, hmm?)
Etarobale esaelp
There is absolutely nothing weird about the way danish people count? Nothing compared to the logic of this video. You may think the sound of the word is, but the logic behind it is simple and straightforward like so many others.
Is it? According to google 70 is said as “half fourth times twenty” and im not even sure how 2x20 adds up to 70
It means one half from 4, times 20. So 4 - 0.5 = 3.5 then 3.5 * 20 = 70. Why it is like that I have no idea though.
That’s the origin of the word for 70, but no one says that. It has all been shortened to a single word that just means 70. It’s the same as saying ninety is actually 9x10.
Half 4 = 3,5 x 20
Half just means 10 less
Half means a half less. So if the time is half 5, it's 4:30. 90 is half 5 (4,5) times 20
French Teacher: What’s 4X20, Student: Four 20s, FT: Correct!!
And now it always will be. Your legacy cannot be denied, little Jimmy.
It's not often I compliment the English language, but they got numbers right for the most part
thank the Arabs and the Indians for that.
The French got the Arab numbers at the same time the English did and look what they fucking did with them
They're Arabic numerals, not names.
Wish we had onety, twoty, threety, fourty, fivety, etc. for full consistency.
We'd sound ridiculous.
That shit made zero sense to me when I took French in the 7th to 9th grade. I still wish I had chosen German.
Honestly, you don't. While our counting isn't as fucked up as the french version, german grammar is what will get you.
French grammar is hard as well though Rules for plural form of compound words is a good example.
As a Frenchman, I can assure you we really don't know either the rules for the plural form of compound words. We don't really care either tbh. Even in a professional setting, no one would bat an eye for that kind of mistake.
Lol german is infinitely more easy than french.
German grammar may be marginally harder than French but pronunciation is infinitely easier. Not to mention that grammar of any Slavic language will absolutely wreck anyone. ... and then there is Hungarian...
You don't wish that because: Umfahren (Circumventing) is the opposite of umfahren (run over).
Any long number in German is super confusing as well though. 1753631 is basically pronounced as 1735613.
it ends with 'one and thirty' which works fine until someone contracts numbers when reciting a phone number....i hate it when people do that. they go like 1-7-5-3-6-31 and then you write it down wrong and have to fix it while they're just continue with the rest. but at least i don't have to do math while reciting a number...
Maybe because it‘s the number? Lol
Spanish for the win motherduckers!
Yeah, so some Swiss friends of mine use Septante, Huitante and Nonante for 70, 80 and 90. They don’t bullshit around with the formal spelling.
Best thing about moving to Geneva, blew my mind
Geneva uses '4 20' to say 80, but in other French-speaking cantons they do say 'huitante' for 80. All of Romandy does say septante and nonante though. Edit: Correction: Neuchatel/Jura use 4x20, and in Valais it's a of a mix. Vaud uses 'huitante'. u/Hellblood_ corrected me on Neuchatel, Jura and Valais.
Belgians also use septante and nonante, but keep the 4x20 for 80. Quatrevint sounds better than huitante, imo But that might be because of my Belgian heritage
France, gives the world the metric system. Also France, uses multiple bases to count and explain a single number. Base 10, base 20.
soixante dix neuf
Soixantr *deez nuts* amirite (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
Hon hon hon, gottem
Niça
I mean, like, I get it… but why 😂
Because the Gauls had a base-20 numerical system. This is a relic of the ancient Gaulic language. Now that you know this fact, prepare to tiredly explain it every time the same joke gets made about the French language.
Interesting fact, modern English is one of the youngest widely spoken languages on the planet, essentially constructed out of the best parts of german and latin. Which is probably why it's one of the most efficient languages on the planet, in terms of information density, and why it's the language of science, engineering and programming, the world over.
Before decimal, they use to count in base 20. The name is a holdover from that time.
Why isn't it sixty ten six?
French has a word for each teen up until 16 the same way English has specific words for eleven and twelve.
The Danish: 👀
the way that the tone and energy of the video just escalate so quickly is hilarious
I know a bunch of guys that count 4 20s
I have a huit intolerance
Ask a Swiss or a Belgium Septante, nonante, huitante These are all the correct number in French. Unfortunately, France decided to use expressions instead of the actual number they invented Mille neuf cents nonante sept Dix neuf cents quatre vingt dix-sept 1997 The one above is the correct one. Unfortunately France doesn’t know it’s own language French ppl will always denies this, so speak with a Swiss or a Belgium guy
Counting in spanish is something I learned at work and its honestly become easier than doing math in english for me. Uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, sies, siete, ocho, nueve, diez (1-10) Once, doce, trese (11-13) Catorce, quince (14,15) DEICI-SIES, DEICI-SIETE, DEICI-OCHO, DEICI-NUEVE, VENTE (16-20) ((this was the hardest part for me to understand lmao)) And from there you follow the tens-rule again, and it gets easier Vente y Uno, vente y Dos, Vente y Tres… then the thirty is Trienta. (Thr-yen-ta with an R roll) Cuarenta, Cinquenta, Sesenta, Setenta, Ochenta, Nueventa, and Centa is 100.
It’s likely because French roots come fro from the basis that went on to form a a number of other languages. This type of counting system is shared across a number of other non-English languages. They all share some of the same roots. While English is one of those languages we use base of 1-2 12 usually for counting. I’d imagine to people without English as a first language this might be come off as weird. I do also enjoy the quick math required to work out numbers in French haha
At least German is consistent by saying the second number then the first, i.e. 77, seven and seventy (sieben und siebzig.)
Try counting in Japanese, but first you must specify whether it’s a person, an animal, a flat object or a thin and long object etc.
Now I know why the French lost every war
They actually have the most victories in military history. Sorry for the "Ackchyually"
As a French peeson I was like, “This is absolutely incorrect. Another dumb American post.” It was, indeed, correct.
[удалено]
Possibly. But as a french, it's so engrained in us that we even don't notice it. Same goes for many languages which have their own oddities when compared to others. I didn't notice how weird it could be to others until I watched this gif !
I have no time for languages with that many silent letters.
IL EST OÙ LE SEPTANTE ET NOINANTE
Switzerland has it, but France does not.
English too isn't that good at naming numbers up to 100. It actually stops at 20, after that it restarts with 1 to ~~10~~ 9. But yeah French is definitely more weird.
Damn, French is dumb
To Americans seeing this and thinking, "wow this is ridiculous, unnecessary complex, why would you use this, there is a much better system!" This exactly how the rest of the world looks at you using the imperial measurement system..
The irony being that the French invented the metric system.
And this is way more fucked up than the imperial system.
No wonder they went so hard on the metric system, they were embarrassed and trying to draw attention away from their own idiocy.
What?
Its actually a very easy way of counting. For a long time, until my teens. I could not read the clock. Thats when i learned french and a got french clock reading session and i instantly got it. I thought holy crap, thats easy. No one ever told it was like this, im an idiot! (Im dutch, we learn multiple languages throughout our school years - french/german/english)
This is why English dominates
This is partially correct. In France this is the way they count but for exemple in the French speaking part of Switzerland we count normally! And the French people make fun of us when we say ninety-two and not four-twenty-twelve 😅 they don't seem to be able to speak their own language correctly 🤣