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…
Counting in the wrong language
111–120 of 125 posts
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#112What 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…
German speaking kids learn inverted system. And it's a struggle to quickly realize and do mental math once they start speaking other languages like English where double-digits are non inverted.
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Minor nitpick nitpick: except for years, e.g., I don't remember exactly when the Magna Carta was signed, but it was somewhere in the twelve-hundreds.
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#114I asked "Well then, what's 7 times 11?"
"It's seventy-seven."
"Okay, I bet you don't know what 12 times 11 is."
"Twelvety-twelve", she gleefully replied.
We agreed that twelvety-twelve is a perfectly good number, we know what it is, but if we were talking to other people we would tell them one hundred and thirty two – for us, twelvety-twelve is just fine.
– Bill Thurston, Groups, Tilings and Finite State Automata
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's funny. I learned French from a Belgian woman and I called 80 "octante" until I was formally taught French and switched to quatre-vingt to avoid sounding like a hick. Did I somehow come up with "octante"? Is it not used in Belgium, or anywhere else? It's true that it sounds a lot more Greek (my native language) than "huitante".
Many French people believe that it is used in Belgium and Switzerland though, for some reason, but as far as I know that's not true (I live in Belgium, although not in a French speaking region).
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's funny. I learned French from a Belgian woman and I called 80 "octante" until I was formally taught French and switched to quatre-vingt to avoid sounding like a hick. Did I somehow come up with "octante"? Is it not used in Belgium, or anywhere else? It's true that it sounds a lot more Greek (my native language) than "huitante".
Octante was taught for a while in France at the beginning of the 20th century, but it never really caught on. Old people in Brittany used to use it sometimes as well, but it has completely disappeared everywhere now. It does sound nicer and more natural to me than huitante. Many French people believe that it is used in Belgium and Switzerland though, for some reason, but as far as I know that's not true (I live in Be…
I make a disservice to Pascale, the first lady who taught me French, and who was, herself French, by saying it was a Belgian woman who taught me French. The Belgian lady, Catherine, taught me _most_ of my French but I first started speaking French with Pascale.
Which is to say, it's possible I learned "octante" from Pascale, although she was far from old enough to have learned it in the early 20th century.
So I'm guessing "octante" is still used in some French-speaking places, although not that widely.
And I'll probably sound rather quaint if I use it myself :)
[For the record, I'm Greek but I learned French very early on because my dad had cousins in the Greek diplomatic corps and he wanted me to get a job there and he thought French is the language of diplomacy. I was not interested in that, of course. But at least, thanks to my dad's silly ambitions, I grew up practically billingual.]
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#117What 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…
> german-speaking kids have a similar number system to Dutch-speaking kids but learn their multiplication tables to 20x20 rather than 12x12 as is customary in English I was charmed to learn that the word for a times table in Chinese is 九九乘法表, literally "nine-nine-multiplication-method-table". One assumes the table goes up to 9x9.
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Minor nitpick nitpick: except for years, e.g., I don't remember exactly when the Magna Carta was signed, but it was somewhere in the twelve-hundreds.
So your point does not contradict mine.
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"Hundert" and "und" can sound very similar when spoken quickly, so you have to pay special attention in this case.
Consider this: "sixty-nine" is clearly 69. But when spoken out, especially in a long string of digits (like an IBAN, a banking code) that might be announced as "six, nine" or "sixty-nine" or "sixty...nine" or even "six...ty-nine".
So even in English there's some chance of ambiguity whether it is supposed to be 6-9 or 6-0-9 (consider: "forty-two, sixty, nine" for 4-2-6-0-9).
In German the awkward inversion makes this worse. So you might get "neunundsechzig" (6-9), "neun...undsechzig" (9... no, wait, 6-9? or maybe 9-6-0?) or "neunund...sechzig" (...6-9). Although the last one is unambiguous, you're basically stuck waiting for the end because you're trying to write digits down left to right and don't want to skip digits and backtrack.
As for why "neun...und sechzig" is ambiguous: with that weird pause it's not clear if this is still 69 or literally "9 and 60" (which is what the word "neunundsechzig" means), i.e. 9-60. As people sometimes emphasise the final digit or digit pair by saying "and" before it (like you would in a list of words), this is ambiguous and at least might give a listener pause.
"Hundert" and "und" generally aren't similar enough for this to be a problem and there's a special place in hell for people who read out groups of digits longer than 2 as numbers, so this isn't generally a problem. Most people do however tend to slur the "und" so e.g. "sechsundsechzig" becomes "sechsnsechzig" but this rather avoids the problem I mentioned (except for the backtracking).
Re: Counting in the wrong language
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Hundert" and "und" can sound very similar when spoken quickly, so you have to pay special attention in this case.
No, the problem is that people read out long numeric sequences in inconsistent ways. Consider this: "sixty-nine" is clearly 69. But when spoken out, especially in a long string of digits (like an IBAN, a banking code) that might be announced as "six, nine" or "sixty-nine" or "sixty...nine" or even "six...ty-nine". So even in English there's some chance of ambiguity whether it is supposed to be 6-9 or 6-0-9 (consider:…
9 und 60 vs. 9 hundert 60, if you speak quickly then the "ert" part of hundert is often swallowed, making it more difficult to discern between the remaining "hund" and "und".