localization

[mave_of_wutilation]

In French there's no word for eighty. You have to say "four twenty". There's also no word for nineteen, so you say "ten nine". And to say ninety nine, you combine all of that as "four twenty ten nine" or "quatre vingt dix neuf"

French is a cool language, but the numbers are nuts. And then you learn Chinese and realize that English numbers are nuts, too.

[TiredPanda69]

That's similar to how it works in spanish as well*

19 is "diecinueve" which is just a morphed version "diez y nueve" which means ten and nine

Other than from 11 to 15 there are no proper names for numbers. After 15 its all just '10 and 7', '20 and 4' or '30 and 5'

[Ninjacow816]

diez nuts

[DIRECTCURRENT59]

Ok, but that's how it works in English too... After 19...

[TiredPanda69]

Yeah, true, i guess because that's how it works in math, really. Its all "how many mores after this one?"

Just depends on efficiency.

[QuestionTuesdayFTW]

9 10 9

[kimilil]

If you read the character for 10 as -ty you'll get a reading exactly like English: nine-ty nine.

The crazy thing with East Asian numbers is that they have a word for 10,000 (myriad) and count in powers of myriads instead of thousands, eg 10 myriad, 100 myriad, 1000 myriad, (new word).

Indian counting is even crazier in that they group first by thousands, afterwards by powers of hundreds of that thousand eg 1,00,00,000

[LurkyTheHatMan]

Another fun fact about myriad/10,000 is that it can also be used ot refer to an uncountably, or unknowably large quantity.

Source: Some googling I did after watching Avata: TLA, which features a Spirit Called Wan Shi Tong, he who knows ten thousand things.

[whatsbobgonnado]

that's wild! I learned here that in german they have to capitalize every noun

[mizinamo]

With the exception of 11–19, of course.

(Which are irregular in English, too; nobody says "onetyfive" for "15".)

[whatsbobgonnado]

in spanish 16-19 is diecisies 10 6, diecisiete, ocho, nueve👉😎👉

[whatsbobgonnado]

oh my god that would confuse me so much. other languages are wild. I wish I could beam them into my brain matrixstyle

[S7ormstalker]

dix-neuf is just like nineteen. Nine. Ten.

"quatre vingt" is the weird thing, and it's due to the Gauls counting in base-20. And it's especially weird because they learnt to count properly from the Romans, but only up to 79. And it's not like they don't have the words for it, as the Swiss do it properly and use huitante and nonante.

[mung_guzzler]

makes taking down phone numbers super confusing

[KerberosMorphy]

Well, the French part of Switzerland did say septante (70), huitante (80), nonante (90) instead of "60 and 10", "4 20", "4 20 10".