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Counting in the wrong language

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Re: Counting in the wrong language

#71

Post by oefrha »

chadlavi wrote: post #52
oefrha wrote: post #5

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.

Uh... isn't that just because all digits in Chinese are monosyllabic? Doesn't really have much to do with the way the number is conceptualized.

Given that children (and some adults) verbalize thoughts in their minds, being able to speak something faster is an advantage. It also makes memorization easier. Take the multiplication table as an example.

By the way, digits are almost monosyllabic in English too (with the exception of seven) but not even remotely as nice.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#72

Post by ajuc »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #65
ajuc wrote: post #16

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…

> when English speakers say things like "twelve hundreds" for numbers between 1000 and 2000 We do that in every other range too. It would be completely normal to read 3700 as "thirty-seven hundred". In what I assume is a related phenomenon, long numbers can be read out in digit pairs rather than single digits (say a PIN code 3742 - "thirty-seven forty-two", as opposed to "three seven four two"), though the digit pair…

> In what I assume is a related phenomenon, long numbers can be read out in digit pairs rather than single digits

Poles do it as well, in pairs, triples or single digits, doesn't matter. But only for numbers that aren't quantities. Like - ids, account numbers, zip codes, phone numbers - no problem, but reading population or account balance that way would be weird.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#73

Post by Swizec »

ajuc wrote: post #63
Swizec wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Slovenia we used to have the old Slavic names for months, but somewhere around my or my parent’s generation they completely died in favor of roman months. My grandpa is still fluent in them, my parents knew about them and probably knew how to use them once upon a time, I know them as something you see on very old calendars and a curiosity we learned about in kindergarten. All I remember is that my birthday month,…

That's the thing with moving the months back and forth :), in Poland listopad is November, and October is październik (comes from paździerz (chaff?) - the husks of grains separated by threshing it).

Actually you know what, I messed it up. Listopad is November. October is vinotoč because it's when young wine turns into real wine.

Just goes to show how little this stuff is used nowadays :D

Although wikipedia[1] says that listopad is an alternative name for October. I am now sufficiently confused.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_months

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#74

Post by dfawcus »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #61
julesnp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> March used to be the first month of the year. It was changed to January hundreds of years before Caesar came along Depends on your perspective. In the US (really, in Britain), this change occurred during the lifetime of George Washington, who arguably lived hundreds of years after Caesar. ;p

and our (UK) tax system still hasn't caught up, starting on the 5th April.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#75

Post by jaldhar »

weberc2 wrote: post #32
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…

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 (includin…

The Sanskrit names for the days of the week are named after the same planets. I think both the Indians and the Graeco-Romans originally got them from the Babylonians who were the authority for all things astronomical and astrological in the ancient world.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#76

Post by mitchty »

pluma wrote: post #10
cyborgx7 wrote: post #2

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…

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.

I'm slightly confused as a native English speaker here.

zwei und vierzig versus zwei hundert vierzig are radically different to my ears.

The counting thing is annoying but not as annoying as French numbers in my not so humble opinion. Though I guess English had it at one point with things like 4 score and 7 years ago (a score being 20 years, so 87 years ago)

Guess maybe I'm weird but outside of the "flip last two numbers around in your brain in German" it never struck me as much more than: Well that's weird, least its not french numbers under 100 where I have to add mentally so no big deal.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#77

Post by nkrisc »

ajuc wrote: post #21
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…

In Polish months are named after plants that bloom then and weather conditions. Quite poetic to say "I will meet you on the 5th day in the month of linden trees" :) The funny thing is that other Slavic countries use similar names but some are moved 1 month back or forth because flowers bloom earlier/later there :) And days of the week are simply numered starting with sunday = "niedziela" (not working day), "poniedzia…

Interesting. So my grandmother's maiden name "wrzesień" has a meaning beyond "September" (according to Polish-English translations)?

I don't know for a fact it had the accent over the last letter. Records here in the US exclude it, of course that hardly means it wasn't there originally.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#78

Post by schwartzworld »

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…

> Quick, what's 3 months before November

Wow. It took me a second, which is weird since I have no trouble seeing 11/5 and 8/5 as November and August Fifth, respectfully.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#79

Post by gattr »

nkrisc wrote: post #77
ajuc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Polish months are named after plants that bloom then and weather conditions. Quite poetic to say "I will meet you on the 5th day in the month of linden trees" :) The funny thing is that other Slavic countries use similar names but some are moved 1 month back or forth because flowers bloom earlier/later there :) And days of the week are simply numered starting with sunday = "niedziela" (not working day), "poniedzia…

Interesting. So my grandmother's maiden name "wrzesień" has a meaning beyond "September" (according to Polish-English translations)? I don't know for a fact it had the accent over the last letter. Records here in the US exclude it, of course that hardly means it wasn't there originally.

The word is derived from "wrzos" = heather.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#80

Post by nkrisc »

ajuc wrote: post #16

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…

> 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

Minor nitpick but people will say, "twelve hundred" not "twelve hundreds" (at least in all of my experience growing up in the US). The reason being, you have eight hundred, nine hundred, (we don't talk about ten hundred), eleven hundred, twelve hundred, and so on. It's kind of like a continuance of how the hundreds below 1000 are named.

Interestingly you will hear sometimes "ten hundred" when talking about address systems where each block increases the address by 100. Such as, "the ten hundred block of Example street." But I've never heard it anywhere else.

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