51–60 of 125 posts
One, two, three, ... Second-one (11), second-two (12), second-three (13), ... Third-one (21), third-two (22), third-three (23), ...
ie you have an off-by-one error in the tens digit as you are counting.
Modern Finnish retains this for 11-19, but mercifully sanity returns for numbers above that.
I think one good test of the counting-friendliness of a language is reciting the digits of pi (the limitation is obvious: only single digits are considered). Among the few languages I know, I can easily recite the first twenty digits after the decimal point in Mandarin within three seconds. In English it’s just painful, at least for me.
What an absurd Sapir-Whorfian argument. The English ten words are the same as the Chinese (e.g. “forty” is clearly “four-tens” with the corners knocked off). If summing two-digit numbers is slower for some cohort of kids it’s more likely the school system than language. For example german-speaking kids have a similar number system to Dutch-speaking kids but learn their multiplication tables to 20x20 rather than 12x12…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fellow German here. I find it extremely annoying when people read out numbers for me to write down and announce pairs as numbers instead of digits. If you mean 42 and read out "zwei und vierzig" I will pause and have to figure out if you meant 240 and you know it. This kind of thing just seems almost intentionally inconsiderate because of the unnecessary ambiguity.
Why? Isn't 240 zwei hundret vierzig? Not trying to be difficult... from what little I remember of my 2 years of college German, zwei und vierzig is 42.
And for the same reasons, really. Putting together things like "Four Twenties" makes sense when you only count to a hundred, and less sense when you need to, say, express the speed of light or the size of an electron. I'm sure the musical system made a lot more sense with diatonic sounds, but once you add in accidentals, you're just retaining backwards compatibility because it used to work and the then-living people were familiar with it.
What an absurd Sapir-Whorfian argument. The English ten words are the same as the Chinese (e.g. “forty” is clearly “four-tens” with the corners knocked off). If summing two-digit numbers is slower for some cohort of kids it’s more likely the school system than language. For example german-speaking kids have a similar number system to Dutch-speaking kids but learn their multiplication tables to 20x20 rather than 12x12…
As a native Polish speaker it was very strange to me when English speakers say things like "twelve hundreds" for numbers between 1000 and 2000. Nobody in Poland ever says that because we don't separate 200 into 2 words "two hundred" we say "dwieście" (which comes from two hundreds, but is significantly changed and considered separate word not 2 words joined). It sounds to us like "4 twenties" would sound to English p…
I suspect the effect of this, in practice, is almost negligible. What's more interesting is why being good at maths/physics is considered very uncool in English-speaking countries (not sure about other European ones), but is actually seen as cool in, say, Russia or Bulgaria or Singapore [citation needed]. It is not seen as strange or unusual for girls to be better at science than boys either, possibly because it is n…
This is a very interesting observation if its real. I am from Bulgaria and I am a PhD candidate in physics. Whenever I tell someone that, they always say that its sounds cool and difficult and the next question is: What are you going to work after that? I guess that physics, at least in Bulgaria is not considered as a field that you could work in, more as in something you learn for the sake of knowledge. Why do you t…
In my experience in Russia, "nerds" were rather those that were extremely diligent but did not really have passions or interests; being good at science was actually seen as kinda cool. Sports achievements were not really emphasized at all.
But it is all anecdotal, and I would like to see some actual studies on this.
In Czech they often say "triadvacet" which literally translated means "threeandtwenty" and I can't help to not think they said 32 every time I hear it.
As someone who went to school in spain but at home always spoke german and now lives in Germany, the number inversion is the bain of my existance (hyperbole). I can't tell you how many times I have made mistakes because of it when communicating with people, and how often I have written down number incorrectly because of it. At some point I just want to train myself to say it the "right" way, even if it sounds wrong i…
Modern: 32 = "thirty-two" (similar to English)
Old: 32 = "two-and-thirty" (similar to German)
The modern system was introduced by the government in the 50s as a requirement from the national phone operator.
This was before automatic switches were common, so users had to speak with an operator to patch to the correct destination. They insisted that the old counting method introduced too many errors. The government agreed and made a new law requiring schools to teach the new method.