Counting in the wrong language • Hacker News Board

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#81

Post by ajuc » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

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.

wrzos (heather) is a plant that blooms in early autumn, hence the name wrzesień.

Also it's not accent, it's softening of the n sound, similar to Spanish n with ~.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#82

Post by nkrisc » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #81

nkrisc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

wrzos (heather) is a plant that blooms in early autumn, hence the name wrzesień. Also it's not accent, it's softening of the n sound, similar to Spanish n with ~.

Yes I should have said, "diacritic"

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#83

Post by skykooler » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

qw wrote: post #60

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…

It could be worse. Norway has two counting systems 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 me…

English used to use that "old" system, which it got from German (see "Sing a song of sixpence" - "four and twenty blackbirds"), but this mainly changed to the modern system around the time of Shakespeare.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#84

Post by Quekid5 » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #34

otikik wrote: post #13

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…

Danish has a similar madness going on. 66 is "six and three twenties" 77 is "seven and half four twenties" I've been told that Danish accountants use Swedish or Norwegian numbers to avoid mistakes. https://blogs.transparent.com/danish/2011/09/14/counting-in-...

66 is seks-og-tres, i.e. seks (6) og (and/+) tres (60). The latter is technically "tresindstyve" (which is similar to the French, 3x20), but I can guarantee you that the number of people who actually know and care about that is infinitesimal. Additionally, "tres" is not really a word that can be mistaken for another number word. What usually screws people over is pronunciation and thus "tredive" vs "tretten" which sound shockingly similar in Danish.

(This happens a lot in Danish. It's incredibly sloppy on pronunciation and people somehow mostly still understand each other.)

EDIT: I had to think about it for a bit, but the situation for 77 is actually equivalent. No speaker of Danish actually thinks about "halvfjerds" as a compound number -- it just "70". I suspect it's actually very similar for French speakers, but their hyphens do make it harder to just lump the thing into a single concept/number :).

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#85

Post by ccccc0 » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #64

hervature wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French speaking Canadian, I still say soixante-dix, quatre-vingt, and quatre-vingt-dix.

Wait, is it quatre-vingt or quatre-vingts? Is there a context that would distinguish the pronunciation of those two?

Quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-deux... quatre-vingt mille, quatre-vingts millions. This doesn't affect pronounciation in general, because this s is silent... except in the context of liaisons, such that you would say "quatre-vingts (z')avions" and not "quatre-vingt (t')avions", although in colloquial speech, nobody cares. In written form, I expect many of my fellow French native speakers to do the mistake or at least be uncertain. We mostly write it "80" anyway.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#86

Post by cwkoss » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

otikik wrote: post #13

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…

Does 80 in France have any of the 420 weed connotations?

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#87

Post by jobigoud » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #64

hervature wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French speaking Canadian, I still say soixante-dix, quatre-vingt, and quatre-vingt-dix.

Wait, is it quatre-vingt or quatre-vingts? Is there a context that would distinguish the pronunciation of those two?

Spelling depends on various things. If it's followed by another number, then its singular: quatre-vingt-trois. Otherwise, it's plural, quatre-vingts. Unless it's an ordinal / noun, J'habite au quatre-vingt rue de la Paix.

Pronunciation is the same, unless there is a liaison: elle a quatre-vingts ans = there will be a 'z' sound between vingts and ans.

FYI, I'm a native speaker and I had to look the spelling part up to be sure. There are other rules with other exceptions for cent, mille, million, milliard.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#88

Post by cwkoss » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #30

This brings up a point that has always eerily intrigued me: Can you even count at all -without- a language? Visually, you might be able to do it; e.g. seeing a clump of 5 trees and knowing it’s 5 without having to “say” “five” in your head. But try tapping on the desk or clapping your hands and counting how many times you did it without saying/thinking “1, 2, 3, 4...” I wonder if associating a transient stream of inp…

My evopsych class in college touched on this.

Brains can track a number of discrete objects (from 3 to ~7, depending on species and maturity). Once we get past this number, brains tends to interpret it as 'many'. From the studies we looked at, it appears that the brain can innately count within this number, but reverts to 'many' representation after it.

Ex. crows can count three people going into an obscured area with food, and know that once three people have left, it's safe to get the food, as there aren't any people left.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#89

Post by cyberferret » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

As a kid, I still remember the day that my dad was helping me with my Maths homework.

On one tricky problem, he unconsciously started muttering the numbers out loud, and I was surprised to hear him saying them in Tamil (he is from Sri Lanka, but we spoke only English at home as far as I've known).

I asked him about it later, and he said that in his head, he always translated the numbers or problems into Tamil, solved them, then translated back to English to present the solution - because he was taught maths as a kid in Tamil.

He could still do all that faster than I could in all English!

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#90

Post by CoreDumpling » Fri, Nov 22, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #42

pluma wrote: post #10

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 then there is "zwei vierzig" or €2,40