A nerdy thread about language and numbers

[Chyia]

Originally Posted by Black Mambo

Oh I totally forgot that's how 90 went. For some reason I had it in my head that it had its own name.

[I see you edited to mention 70 too... omg, I can't believe how much I have forgotten. Seriously.]

Ah so Spanish stops at 15 with the odd names and goes ten-six, ten-seven after that? So I guess it's a bit more different from French than I thought, since French goes up to 16 and then does the ten-seven thing.

My brain is frazzled.

haha
Oh you love it. You know you do

I ttly remembered the bit in French using multiples of 20 for voicing numbers past a certain point. Prob just bc it was so bizarre to me for a long while?

Number nerd stuff interests me but tbh I'm yr basic Ling/Lang correlatiions dork
It's WELL freaky tho when the 2 collide & btw this thread pwnspretty much everything recently posted
<333
Chyia

[petals]

i generally consider myself fairly nerdy but this thread made me go crosseyed. consider me subpar.

[RomanNoseJob]

Originally Posted by Hellish With Relish

Yeah in french 80 is quatre vingts, so literally four twenties. And 90 is quatre vingts dix

and seventy is soixante dix, I always thought they just ran out of ideas after 60.

that sounds fucking awful. no wonder descartes went mad and published all that garbage about demons.

[lucy]

Not to even mention danish numbers. They use a 20-base system from 50 up, but then they add some weird archaic expressions for 2.5, 3.5 and 4.5, which, along with truncation, makes the whole thing completely incomprehensible, even to someone who otherwise understands the language perfectly well.

Danish numbers

I remember going on vacation to denmark as a kid, and never managing to pay for something if it cost more than 50 (which is where the base 20 system kicks in).

"that will be seven-and-half-fifth-t."
"um, what?"
"seven. and. half. fiftht."
"um. right. here's money. i think there's quite a lot of it. could you just take what you need?"

[bort]

I just like how awesome and versatile a number 10 is. I'm in love with the metric system. And decimals.