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.
Counting in the wrong language
11–20 of 125 posts
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#12A 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 they are a pain in the rear to use. It's high time to relegate them to second-class status, like Roman numerals.
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#13I 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 back.
I think the French-speaking parts of Belgium, Switzerland and Canada did the right thing when they replaced all that complexity by dedicated words for 70, 80 and 90.
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#14A 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
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#15That point about Dutch children and little-endian names for numbers is a fun little nugget. The complaint is that they're forced to read the numbers backwards, when the numerals in question are Arabic numerals, invented by a culture that reads from right-to-left and has little-endian names for numbers. I would assume that kids who grow up speaking and learning math in Arabic have no such problems.
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#16As 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 people instead of "eighty".
So because of language it's not natural to think of 1300 as 13*100, it's much more natural to think of it as 1000+300.
But it's still better in Polish than in German ;) At least we don't do mixed endian like "hundred two and twenty" :)
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#17A 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 months.)
Edit: Apparently, I -- and the very funny person B -- were misinformed. Jan and Feb were inserted, and different months were renamed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#18A 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
Now thank you for that... I wasn’t aware of this, but will probably never forget it again. You ruined these months for me! :-)
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#19I 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 think that in English speaking countries is different than others? I temporarily currently living in France and I do not have many contacts with non scientists, but the ones that asked me what I do all found it cool sounding.
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#20A 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
So we have the solution! Just put them back in their original order and call every other month N-ember!