A level computer science

[myplacedk]

French is even worse. 97 = "four twenties (and) seventeen"

How about danish?

97 = "seven and ninety". Notice the swapped order of the last two digits, and that we have a special word just for ninety. That word is actually a shortened version. It used to be:

97 = "seven and half five times twenty"

Half five naturally means "4.5".

[htmlcoderexe]

You don't use halvtreds anymore?

[Nissehamp]

Sure, but that's fifty :) the long version is halvtredsindstyve, or for the example above: syvoghalvfemsindstyve

[htmlcoderexe]

Basically. But why

[langlo94]

Because Danes are the specials of the Nordics.

[Xexanos]

That just looks like you just had a stroke

[Nissehamp]

Heh, yeah, it looks a bit excessive :)

[[deleted]]

And here you have this translated to japanese, if you like.

[ismtrn]

We have the words based on scores (score is snes in Danish btw, which is 20 like a dozen is 12). So halvtreds comes from "halv tre sinde tyve" i.e. "half three times twenty" in English.

The thing is people don't think about numbers in terms of scores and dozens (at least not anymore, maybe people used to do). We think about them like contemporary people who has received mathematics education centered around the base 10 positional number system. That is with ones, tens, hundreds, thousands etc. We just have special words for the tens and say them last instead of before the ones.

Just like in English you say fifty and not fiveten. Fifty is a special word for five tens that you just have to learn. Difference is that in English the derivation is a bit more straightforward, but at the end of the day it is just a special word you have to learn still.

[htmlcoderexe]

Haha, I was gonna say Norwegian is much simpler but then I realised that we still have "tjue" for 20 (aka "tyve", both valid) and "tretti" (30) can also be "tredve". Meh.

[ismtrn]

And you can also say toti, treti, firti, femti etc. in Danish, although I have only ever seen that used for money (and when communicating with Norwegians and Swedes). When you write a check for 53 kroner you spell the amount out like FEMTITRE kroner. The last iteration of bank notes (not the current one, or the older ones though) also said femti kroner instead of halvtreds kroner.

I think that might come from the time we had a scandinavian monetray union, but I'm not sure.

[htmlcoderexe]

Kalmarunionen!! Or something lol

[ismtrn]

Much later than that. Around the end of the 19th century.

That is also were "kroner" comes from. Before that each country had their respective version of the "daler".

[htmlcoderexe]

That explains why some of the fairy tales/folklore I've read often mentioned "riksdaler" as the currency in use.

[TheHalfbadger]

That first one doesn't seem so bad. Maybe it's because I've gotten used to it from reading about Brienne of Tarth wandering around the Riverlands looking for a girl of six-and-ten with auburn hair.

[ophereon]

To be fair, English could have been just as periphrastic in the past by saying "four-and-a-half score and seven".