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It's base 20 like in France, plus the quirk that we have an ordinal numeral way of saying half integers, i.e. 1.5 is "half second", 2.5 is "half third", 4.5 is "half fifth". So 92 is said as "two and half fifth times twenty". We've since made the "times twenty" implicit for maximum confusion, so it's just said as "two and half fifths".
Also, the ordinal numeral system for halves is only really used for 1.5 these days, so the numbers don't really make sense to anyone. When speaking to other Scandinavians, we often just say "nine ten two".
Why don't we just change it to the more sensible system then? Because language is stubborn.
Now imagine moving there as a foreigner from a normal country and someone telling you their phone number! It's like having a micro stroke.
1.5 is "half second", 2.5 is "half third", 4.5 is "half fifth"
Interesting. ~~Regionally, some~~ Germans measure time like this, i.e. "half two" is 01:30 resp. 13:30. (Which is different from English, where people who say "half two" mean "half past two".)
We've since made the "times twenty" implicit for maximum confusion, so it's just said as "two and half fifths".
I know very little about Danish, but I learned that Danes slur the middle of most words. So I suspect you actually pronounce even less of the word than you'd write..?
Because language is stubborn.
Belgian French gives me hope.
--
[Edited: Usage is not regional]
Regionally, some Germans measure time like this, i.e. "half two" is 01:30 resp. 13:30.
This isn't regional nor "some", I never met a German wo doesn't. Sure, there is "13 o'clock 30" and both are valid but I'd say the default is still the half system.
When it comes to quarters, there are regional differences and it's a common "ice breaker" or small talk topic when people from all over Germany come together.
When we say "half two" we also mean 13:30. It's a pain when in Britain.
And yeah, I guess in pronouncing you'd say 92 as "to'å'l'fems" rather than "to-og-halv-fems".
It's pronounced "toh-år-hal-fems".
That's 3 syllables, because the first two are glissando, but even the most rural person needs some consonants between the rest to make any sense.
So the Danish can do this bullshit with everyday numbers and it’s cool because language , but I mention that it’s 70 degrees outside and everyone starts arguing about metric?
Everything is arbitrary, I’m gonna go build a dresser in multiples of rabbit foot while you all figure something out.
Danish people are environmentally damaged by the flatness of their country and the rest of Scandinavia pitty them. We will take care of this. We will teach them how to speak. Soonish.
And to confuse even further, the cardinal number (ninety-two) is "to-og-halv-fems" in Danish without the *20. But if you need the ordinal number (92nd), then we add in the x20 as in "to-og-halv-fem-sinds-tyvende". Danish is very easy and transparent 😊
# | 🇩🇰 |
---|---|
1 | en |
2 | to |
3 | tre |
4 | fire |
5 | fem |
6 | seks |
7 | syv |
8 | otte |
9 | ni |
10 | ti |
11 | elleve |
12 | tolv |
13 | tretten |
14 | fjorten |
15 | femten |
16 | seksten |
17 | sytten |
18 | atten |
19 | nitten |
20 | tyve |
21 | enogtyve |
22 | toogtyve |
30 | tredive |
40 | fyrre |
50 | halvtreds |
60 | tres (threes) |
70 | halvfjerds (½fourths) |
80 | firs (fours) |
90 | halvfems (½fifths) |
92 | tooghalvfems (twoand½fifths) |
100 | hundred |
In Czech, we say „čtvrt na osm“ (quarter to eight), „půl osmé“ (half of eighth) and „tři čtvrtě na osm“ (¾ to eight) to mean 19:15
, 19:30
and 19:45
, respectively, so I kinda get it.
Similarly, in German, 🕢=„halb acht“.
We play on Hardcore mode.
Also: the green (at least with English) should be (9 × 10) + 2
English is 90 + 2. Ninety is its own distinct word.
French is similar to English (base ten) but after 60 it gets weird and then at 80 switches to base 20 until 99.
70 in French is 60 + 10 80 and above in French is 4 × 20 + what ever number is needed to get there.
So to say 102 in French, you'd say four-times-twenty-plus-twenty-two.
I don't believe you.
EDIT: What in the actual fuck. You were right. 😳
No. 102 in French is "cent deux".
I love this topic, keep the comments going! It gets even wilder/weirder when reading historical German monastary documents from the early modern period that sometimes mixed German numerical grammar with latin letters and abbreviations. For example this was a common way to write prices in the early 17th century in my region of study:
xiv C Lviұ f xxv bb iy d
All of this was in early modern German Kurrent (old cursive), of course, and with not always obvious whitespaces inbetween. The letters v and x looked somewhat similar, too, and you better don't miss the small strikethroughs anywhere in the lower or upper end of a letter which indicated "minus half" (except for the letter capital C which always has it). This is the kind of fun that brings me joy during my day while simultaneously providing the content for nightmares at night.
For some closure:
The short example would read as: (10+(5-1))*100 + 50+((5+3)-0.5) florin, 10+10+5 batzen, and 1+1+1 denari.
And that would translate to a price of 1457 ½ florin (guilders), 25 batzen (silver coin) and 3 denari (pennies).
Am I correct in thinking that this would be a relatively enormous amount of money for a normal person in that time?
Yes, absolutely! My work is related to monasteries. Some of these institutions were large economical organisations with hundreds or thousands of affiliated workers (in addition to the few dozens of actual clergy) stretching hundreds of villages/cities. Monastaries basically were the major corporations of the time. They did handle these amounts of money regularly.
Historical purchasing power for anything before the industrial revolution is hard to approximate. On the one hand because wages were not only payed in money, on the other hand because labor was very cheap and material cost was high - the inverse of today. To illustrate: They did lots of recycling work that would seem fanatical to us today, e.g. straightening old nails, reusing stones and wood from deconstructions, or even excavating and resharpening rotten fenceposts. To add some general and very rough perspective: An unskilled worker/day-worker could expect a yearly wage in the order of magnitude of about 5 fl (guilders) per year for very hard work and long working hours for 6 or 7 days a week (payed daily in non-face-value coins like pennies). However, it was common for wages to include living accomodation and/or food staples (that included wine or beer) - or pay out the worth of these things, separately. A pair of shoes was a valued gift one could give to an unskilled worker on special occasions.
It was a different time with different societal and economical systems in place. Estimated simplifications you might read online (e.g. 1 fl = 50€) are therefor to be taken with a buttload of salt - to the point one might call it a misrepresentation. Then there were the multiple events with increased silver and gold imports from the new world (combined with some greedy/desperate lords reducing the silver share of their coins). This led to multiple changes in the exchange rates between various regional gold, silver and non-face-value coins of the same names, complicating thing even more.
To solve these issues, the prices I named above would be in fictional coins of account, not actual physical coins that were payed. People had to do quite some math when doing accounting - and yes, minor errors happened all the time.
It's a pretty enormous amount of money now. I was thinking that a gold coin was 1oz which would have been an insane amount of money but some research has told me that guilder can refer to several different coins that are between .08oz and .11oz of gold mixed with other precious metals. Ignoring the other precious metals and assuming the lowest gold content 1457.5 guilders is a bit over 116 oz of gold. Gold is approx. $1900/oz so in gold alone that is over $220,000.
In Hungary we don't even have a separate name for 11 and 12, just 10 + 1 and 10 + 2. But at least we messed up the billions, it's called 'milliárd' and the trillion is 'billió'. We were so close to making it perfect.
*sigh* That's normal across Europe, including the UK until recently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Anyway, don’t tell me Hungarian is sensible when second (unit of time) is “másodperc”.
But at least we messed up the billions
No, you folks did it correctly. It's everyone else who messed up: How big is a billion?
1 million squared is a billion. 1 million cubed is a trillion. (1 million)^4 is a quadrillion. And so forth with pent-, sex-, sept-, oct-, etc. Milliard, billiard, trilliard, etc. slot in between the powers of one million.
Kamelåså
There's also they way it's said in Basque which is 4 x 20 + 12.
I’m not sure what’s more asinine, the colors chosen for this map, or the ~~Dutch~~ Danish.
Edit: worth it for the joke
🇬🇧 ninety
🇫🇷 quatre-vingts-dix
🇩🇰 HALVFEMS
You missed the traditional Celtic systems.
Welsh should be both 9 x 10 + 2 and 2 + 10 + 4 * 20.
And Irish – I didn't get it, they seem to have a modern 9 x 10 + 2 system, an old vigesimal and one for age?
So what is going on in Walloon and Swiss French? Is it just the Parisian dialect that is messed up?