Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Danish numbers

olestig.dk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 32 posts

Re: Danish numbers

#21

Post by Symbiote »

lordnacho wrote: post #4

> The "logic" of the system is NOT transparent nor generally known to native speakers. Totally true, you often find people wondering what exactly the pattern is. A good language teacher will tell you though. > A Scandinavist language reform movement tried to get the 20-based forms replaced by 10-based like Norwegian and Swedish have. With absolutely no success. If this is a real movement, they need better PR. I've ne…

I've had Danes give me the wrong total in a shop in English since they're used to reading the numbers backwards. I've done the same with my phone number -- I practised saying it in Danish so much, I forgot whether it was 56 or 65. Now I only ever say it in English.

I was very pleased at a concert when the barman said "niti fem" -- was this the reform I'd heard about, from reading this page? No, said my friend, it's just my spoken Danish is so bad the barman thought I was Swedish, and tried to be nice.

I've lived here for two years, and I still can't reliably distinguish between "fem og tres" and "fem halv tres".

Re: Danish numbers

#22

Post by Symbiote »

wodenokoto wrote: post #2

While the numbers have interesting etymological roots, in practice we just have more "named" numbers than most similar languages. English has special vocabulary with obvious roots for all tens up to 100 and ordinals are regular except first, second and third. In Danish we just have a lot more irregular ordinals. Practically no-one in Denmark knows about the 20-based number system. > A Scandinavist language reform mov…

I asked a younger Dane how to say "sixtieth" (for example). She couldn't tell me -- she only know how to say "number sixty". Even the textbook only gave ordinal numbers up to 31, for giving the date.

Every Dane I've asked just knows the numbers. It's confusing for foreigners, since many (most?) also know at least two other European languages. When I hear "tres" I'm thinking "three", and it obviously does mean three. It's difficult to think "sixty" instead.

Re: Danish numbers

#23

Post by Bromskloss »

lordnacho wrote: post #18
kristiandupont wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's the point anyway? Well it would be easier for learners to pick up for one, but I actually think the system is annoying, even as a native speaker. When someone tells me a phone number or similar, I will often ask them to read out the digits one by one because writing down the numbers can be difficult with the alternating order.

That's another weird thing. You CAN read out a number as 8 individual digits, but most Danes will give you 4 two-digit numbers. It's almost a shibboleth, like that movie where the non-native German speaker uses his pointing finger instead of his thumb to count "one".

I had a teacher, who, when enumerating, say, three points in his address of the class, used his thumb all three times.

Re: Danish numbers

#24

Post by Bromskloss »

drblah wrote: post #11

I really wish the danish numbers had been reformed. It is a drag to communicate numbers verbally and then write them down. It is very prone to errors since the verbal number sequence is so strange. Exampel: 54. It is pronounced: fire-og-halv-treds (four-and-half-threes.) As you might notice, the spoken sequence is backwards compared to the written number. this gets even more confusing when saying a number above 100.…

Let's not make everything streamlined, bland, and the same everywhere! Let's keep our respective characters, idiosyncrasies, that were passed down from our forefathers. Let it show when you travel from one country to the next!

Re: Danish numbers

#26

Post by yuubi »

badminton1 wrote: post #16

In English, I've noted people do not like thousands. e.g: - 20,000 is 20 k or 20 grand. - 1900 is 19 hundreds not 1 thousand 9 hundred. In Japanese numbers are also different: - there's a word for 10,000 (man), therefore 20,000 is not "20 x 1,000" (ni jyu sen) but rather "2 x 10,000" (ni man). - there's a word for 10^8 (oku), making 1 billion = jyu oku (10 * 10^8).

Also, man doesn't work the same way as the lower powers of 10.

The lower powers 10–1000 take a prefix of 2–9 to multiply them, and omitting the prefix means one.

1 ichi

2 ni

10 juu (not ichi juu)

20 ni juu, literally two ten

100 hyaku

200 ni hyaku

The powers of 10000 seem to take an obligatory prefix 1–9999, formed the usual way (I've never heard just "man" for 10k, always "ichi man", and 12340000 would be literally translated to "thousand two hundred three ten four ten-thousand", while none of the smaller powers seem to ever take a prefix > 9.)

The above is based on not living in Japan, though, so the sample of numbers I've seen might well be missing some things that occur in actual native speech by someone not teaching a first-year class.

Re: Danish numbers

#27

Post by wodenokoto »

Symbiote wrote: post #22
wodenokoto wrote: post #2

While the numbers have interesting etymological roots, in practice we just have more "named" numbers than most similar languages. English has special vocabulary with obvious roots for all tens up to 100 and ordinals are regular except first, second and third. In Danish we just have a lot more irregular ordinals. Practically no-one in Denmark knows about the 20-based number system. > A Scandinavist language reform mov…

I asked a younger Dane how to say "sixtieth" (for example). She couldn't tell me -- she only know how to say "number sixty". Even the textbook only gave ordinal numbers up to 31, for giving the date. Every Dane I've asked just knows the numbers. It's confusing for foreigners, since many (most?) also know at least two other European languages. When I hear "tres" I'm thinking "three", and it obviously does mean three.…

That's a great anecdote! I don't think I knew how to produce the ordinals above 39 consistently for most of my life either. And I've probably said "fyrrende" instead of "fyrretyvende" more than once!

That's the thing about irregular words: if they are rare, native speakers tend to use the regular form, and in this case we have a peculiar situation where there is no regular form!

When learning the 10's in Danish, I think it is very important to leave logic behind and not look for a system. As a kid I had a lot of trouble with 50 and 60 and eventually settled on "the one with "half" is smaller than the one without" and did the same with 70 and 80.

Re: Danish numbers

#28

Post by badminton1 »

yuubi wrote: post #26
badminton1 wrote: post #16

In English, I've noted people do not like thousands. e.g: - 20,000 is 20 k or 20 grand. - 1900 is 19 hundreds not 1 thousand 9 hundred. In Japanese numbers are also different: - there's a word for 10,000 (man), therefore 20,000 is not "20 x 1,000" (ni jyu sen) but rather "2 x 10,000" (ni man). - there's a word for 10^8 (oku), making 1 billion = jyu oku (10 * 10^8).

Also, man doesn't work the same way as the lower powers of 10. The lower powers 10–1000 take a prefix of 2–9 to multiply them, and omitting the prefix means one. 1 ichi 2 ni 10 juu (not ichi juu) 20 ni juu, literally two ten 100 hyaku 200 ni hyaku The powers of 10000 seem to take an obligatory prefix 1–9999, formed the usual way (I've never heard just "man" for 10k, always "ichi man", and 12340000 would be literally…

Yes. Every "myriad" (10^4) they have another word. Meaning they have one for 10^4, 10^8, 10^12, 10^16 and so on... http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/largenumber.html

Largest one I've seen is 10^68.

Re: Danish numbers

#29

Post by Symbiote »

badminton1 wrote: post #16

In English, I've noted people do not like thousands. e.g: - 20,000 is 20 k or 20 grand. - 1900 is 19 hundreds not 1 thousand 9 hundred. In Japanese numbers are also different: - there's a word for 10,000 (man), therefore 20,000 is not "20 x 1,000" (ni jyu sen) but rather "2 x 10,000" (ni man). - there's a word for 10^8 (oku), making 1 billion = jyu oku (10 * 10^8).

Saying "hundred" rather than "thousand" is typical of Americans, British people will say "thousand", except when saying the year.

Re: Danish numbers

#30

Post by jack1243star »

Bromskloss wrote: post #14

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/2c/2d/452c2d0569d1015f4a0b2ea27... Edit: Now that I think about it, maybe the Swedish 90 (_nittio_) should be seen as "9×10" (_nio_×_tio_), since that's at least the etymology. I don't know what to make of the German _-zig_ in _neunzig_. Regarding Japanese, I dont' speak any. Finally, if you allow yourself to dig deep enough into the origins of the French and Danish 20 (_vingt_ and _tyve_…

In Japanese (and Chinese) the 'ten' acts more like a digit separator, so it is as ergonomic as most of the European languages (and perhaps more regular than English)
Post reply on HN