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Anon is French (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 years ago by [M] to c/greentext@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 125 points 2 years ago (5 children)

As much as I love shitting on the French for being terrible with numbers (seriously, how the fuck is the word for '99' 'four-twenties, a ten, and a nine'?!?) this one seems intentional so you can feel when you run out.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The funny thing is that in Switzerland they commonly say nonante neuf. So it's not like there is no word for 90

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Because way back when, before sensible systems, they used base-20, and despite now running base-10, the base-20 is stuck in the language.

    Edit it's sort of in most languages actually, not just to that extent. I mean, English has "twenty-one", but no "onety-one". 1-20 have their own numbers in most languages I think, and after twenty you just repeat the first 10 and add whatever tens you like, whereas the French sometimes repeat the first 20 and add an amount of twenties

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    English has "twenty-one", but no "onety-one".

    But you have teens? Thirteen, fourteen etc? It's just that a dozen was kind of special, so eleven and twelve are kind of irregular, but afterwards it's just ordinary base 10, isn't it?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Well, English does. Not my native language.

    Yes, my point exactly. No "onety-one", because "eleven".

    Same with other languages.

    But "thirteen", "fourteen" etc, you think are as regular as "twenty one", "thirty three" "forty five"?

    It is base-10 all the way through, but I'm just pointing out that probably at one point in history, even other languages, for some reason, counted 1-20 differently than 20+ numbers and they sort of stuck.

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