Counting in the wrong language • Hacker News Board

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#31

Post by Jtsummers » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

omarhaneef wrote: post #17

ken wrote: post #12

A simpler problem is months. The English system uses arbitrary names, while Japanese/Chinese/Korean just call them "1-month", "2-month", etc. Even though I grew up with it, I find the English system impenetrable. Quick, what's 3 months before November? I have to count it out every time. (In mod 12, -3 is the same as +9, so I just count forward 9 months.) The names of the months are a nice nod to our Roman history but…

I just saw this on social media the other day: Person A: "Isn't it just awful that SEPTember, OCTober, NOVember and DECember aren't the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months?" Person B: "They should stab whomever changed that." (For those who may not know, that is a reference to Julius Caesar who inserted July, and if you didn't know that you may be interested to know that Augustus inserted August. Hence we are off by 2 mont…

They were not inserted, they were renamed. The year began in March, so the names of September-December make sense within that context. The start of the year changed later, making the names incorrect.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#32

Post by weberc2 » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

omarhaneef wrote: post #17

ken wrote: post #12

A simpler problem is months. The English system uses arbitrary names, while Japanese/Chinese/Korean just call them "1-month", "2-month", etc. Even though I grew up with it, I find the English system impenetrable. Quick, what's 3 months before November? I have to count it out every time. (In mod 12, -3 is the same as +9, so I just count forward 9 months.) The names of the months are a nice nod to our Roman history but…

I just saw this on social media the other day: Person A: "Isn't it just awful that SEPTember, OCTober, NOVember and DECember aren't the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months?" Person B: "They should stab whomever changed that." (For those who may not know, that is a reference to Julius Caesar who inserted July, and if you didn't know that you may be interested to know that Augustus inserted August. Hence we are off by 2 mont…

That made me chuckle, but apparently it’s a bit more nuanced. According to Wikipedia:

> It was named by the Roman Senate in honour of Roman general Julius Caesar, it being the month of his birth. Prior to that, it was called Quintilis, being the fifth month of the 10-month calendar.

This stuff is fascinating. Reminds me of how the Romance language weekdays are named after the Roman pantheon and the Germanic (including English) weekdays are named after the approximate germanic counterparts for those same Roman gods.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#33

Post by seszett » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

otikik wrote: post #13

I thank the French for the metric system. But their numbers between 70 and 100 are bonkers. 70 is pronunced "60 10". 71 is "60 11". And so on until 80, which is pronounced, obviously, "4 20". 81 is "4 20 1". It goes up to 90, which is "4 20 10". 91 is "4 20 11". The craziness continues until 100, which is, thankfully, a different word ("cent", instead of "4 20 20", or, dear lord, "60 40"). But in 170 it all comes bac…

Canada uses the same numbers as France. Only Belgium and Switzerland use other words for 70 and 90, and just a few parts of French-speaking Switzerland use huitante for 80, but most say quatre-vingt like in France.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#34

Post by BurningFrog » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

otikik wrote: post #13

I thank the French for the metric system. But their numbers between 70 and 100 are bonkers. 70 is pronunced "60 10". 71 is "60 11". And so on until 80, which is pronounced, obviously, "4 20". 81 is "4 20 1". It goes up to 90, which is "4 20 10". 91 is "4 20 11". The craziness continues until 100, which is, thankfully, a different word ("cent", instead of "4 20 20", or, dear lord, "60 40"). But in 170 it all comes bac…

Danish has a similar madness going on.

66 is "six and three twenties" 77 is "seven and half four twenties"

I've been told that Danish accountants use Swedish or Norwegian numbers to avoid mistakes.

https://blogs.transparent.com/danish/2011/09/14/counting-in-...

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#35

Post by omarhaneef » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

QuercusMax wrote: post #28

omarhaneef wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just saw this on social media the other day: Person A: "Isn't it just awful that SEPTember, OCTober, NOVember and DECember aren't the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months?" Person B: "They should stab whomever changed that." (For those who may not know, that is a reference to Julius Caesar who inserted July, and if you didn't know that you may be interested to know that Augustus inserted August. Hence we are off by 2 mont…

I'm not sure this is correct; July and August were renamed, yes, but not inserted. They did steal days from February, which was originally the last month of the Roman calendar.

Ah yes, you are correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar

So Jan and Feb were inserted.

I have to leave the original up as it is because the joke is too good, but I will leave this note as a correction.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#36

Post by dacohenii » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #14

ken wrote: post #12

A simpler problem is months. The English system uses arbitrary names, while Japanese/Chinese/Korean just call them "1-month", "2-month", etc. Even though I grew up with it, I find the English system impenetrable. Quick, what's 3 months before November? I have to count it out every time. (In mod 12, -3 is the same as +9, so I just count forward 9 months.) The names of the months are a nice nod to our Roman history but…

It's worse than that: some of the months are latin-numbered, but due to renumbering the numbers are wrong. September = sept = 7 = month 9 Octobeber = oct (as in octal) = 8 = month 10 November = nov = 9 = month 11 December = dec (as in decimal) = 10 = month 12

I was about to comment on how this is because July and August were added in honor of Julius and Augustus Caesar, but it turns out they were renamed from Quintilis and Sextilis (which would also be misnumbered). It was really January and February that were added later, causing the off-by-2 error :)

Source: https://www.crowl.org/Lawrence/time/months.html

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#37

Post by karatinversion » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

omarhaneef wrote: post #17

ken wrote: post #12

A simpler problem is months. The English system uses arbitrary names, while Japanese/Chinese/Korean just call them "1-month", "2-month", etc. Even though I grew up with it, I find the English system impenetrable. Quick, what's 3 months before November? I have to count it out every time. (In mod 12, -3 is the same as +9, so I just count forward 9 months.) The names of the months are a nice nod to our Roman history but…

I just saw this on social media the other day: Person A: "Isn't it just awful that SEPTember, OCTober, NOVember and DECember aren't the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months?" Person B: "They should stab whomever changed that." (For those who may not know, that is a reference to Julius Caesar who inserted July, and if you didn't know that you may be interested to know that Augustus inserted August. Hence we are off by 2 mont…

This isn’t actually true, July and August were renamed from Quintilis and Sextilis. The off-by-two is because the original roman calendar had ten months, with winter not having named months. (See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar)

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#38

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

omarhaneef wrote: post #17

ken wrote: post #12

A simpler problem is months. The English system uses arbitrary names, while Japanese/Chinese/Korean just call them "1-month", "2-month", etc. Even though I grew up with it, I find the English system impenetrable. Quick, what's 3 months before November? I have to count it out every time. (In mod 12, -3 is the same as +9, so I just count forward 9 months.) The names of the months are a nice nod to our Roman history but…

I just saw this on social media the other day: Person A: "Isn't it just awful that SEPTember, OCTober, NOVember and DECember aren't the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months?" Person B: "They should stab whomever changed that." (For those who may not know, that is a reference to Julius Caesar who inserted July, and if you didn't know that you may be interested to know that Augustus inserted August. Hence we are off by 2 mont…

[deleted]

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#39

Post by oefrha » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #24

samwhiteUK wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious - do you have a way of remembering them? Otherwise they're all just single digits regardless of language.

I never made a special effort for that and I only remember 12 of those digits, so maybe I'm just using an inefficient way, but I remember them as two-digit numbers, not single digits. I don't think I'm alone, the basic value of pi one learns in France is "3 14 16" - "trois quatorze seize" (historically it was "trois quatorze-cent-seize" so "3 1416" but it's less used today).

I believe the basic number taught in Mandarin is 3.1415926, which fits in one second.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#40

Post by julesnp » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

omarhaneef wrote: post #17

ken wrote: post #12

A simpler problem is months. The English system uses arbitrary names, while Japanese/Chinese/Korean just call them "1-month", "2-month", etc. Even though I grew up with it, I find the English system impenetrable. Quick, what's 3 months before November? I have to count it out every time. (In mod 12, -3 is the same as +9, so I just count forward 9 months.) The names of the months are a nice nod to our Roman history but…

I just saw this on social media the other day: Person A: "Isn't it just awful that SEPTember, OCTober, NOVember and DECember aren't the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months?" Person B: "They should stab whomever changed that." (For those who may not know, that is a reference to Julius Caesar who inserted July, and if you didn't know that you may be interested to know that Augustus inserted August. Hence we are off by 2 mont…

Caesar and Augustus didn't insert those months, they were renamed from Quintilis and Sextilis in their honour.

The reason for the discrepancy in names is due to the fact that March used to be the first month of the year. It was changed to January hundreds of years before Caesar came along, so the naming scheme was already 2 months off by that point.