4 ms·

In some cases, I can guess the logic behind the rule, (e.g. "twenty and one second" type idioms) but in other cases, I can't really fathom why it would be so co

In some cases, I can guess the logic behind the rule, (e.g. "twenty and one second" type idioms) but in other cases, I can't really fathom why it would be so complicated.

wyattpeak 8y ago
While I couldn't comment on how they evolved (and I suspect there are many different answers), I'd point out that English has a very complicated pattern for ordinals: 1, ends in 1 except 11, 111...: -st 2, ends in 2 except 12, 112...: -nd 3, ends in 3 except 13, 113...: -rd everything else: -th (also 0, most people say zeroth but nobody really feels comfortable with it.) However they came to be, there's no mental load in applying them and nobody who speaks English natively ever much thinks about it.
- innocenat 8y ago
  This. Come from country who use Type 0 (i.e. no plural whatsoever), English is already complicated and make no sense at first.
- acjohnson55 8y ago
  Yeah, totally agree that there are plenty of things that don't make sense in English. The grammar is easy, but the sure number of irregular froms has got to be really difficult to deal with. At least the rules for plurals in some of the more complex examples are reegular.
jcranmer 8y ago
The general term for this is grammatical number. English gets by with just singular and plural, but this is by no means universal across different languages. A singular/dual/plural breakdown is quite common as well--Arabic, for example. You can also have a paucal form to represent "few", with or without the dual as well (Arabic has dual and paucal, Russian just has the paucal). On top of this base strata are some more choices. You have some choices to make for 0 (English says that 0 gets a plural form, French believes it to be singular). You can also choose how the rules differ when you get to systematic naming for large numbers--do you lump it in with many, or do you reuse the rules for the small numbers when they show up in larger numbers? Note that systematic naming doesn't have to be based on base-10 (say, Danish), nor does the start of systematic names need to happen on a clean boundary (English starts it at 13, for example).
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > nor does the start of systematic names need to happen on a clean boundary (English starts it at 13, for example) It'd be hard to make a case for regular number words starting at thirteen. 13, 14, and 15 are all exceptional in that the numbers 3/4/5 are not usually pronounced "thirt", "fort", or "fiff". You could make a case for starting at 16, but even then it isn't normal for the lower place value to precede the higher one. At 21 you see words that are formed in a fully regular way, but the roots for 20, 30, and 50 are still odd, now being "twen", "thir", and "fiff". From 60 on you can construct number names just by knowing the numbers 1-50 and the place values (hundred / thousand / million / etc.).
  - beojan 8y ago
    The systematic ordinals start at one. The word one becomes first, two becomes second, three becomes third, and everything else has th appended.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      This commment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17165382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17165382 ) accurately slams the extreme complexity of English ordinals in specific, and is sibling to my parent comment. In order to call the ordinals perfectly systematic, you need to take the irregular cardinals as a given. If you're having trouble there, you'll have trouble with the ordinals too.

In some cases, I can guess the logic behind the rule, (e.g. "twenty and one second" type idioms) but in other cases, I can't really fathom why it would be so complicated.

wyattpeak 8y ago

While I couldn't comment on how they evolved (and I suspect there are many different answers), I'd point out that English has a very complicated pattern for ordinals: 1, ends in 1 except 11, 111...: -st 2, ends in 2 except 12, 112...: -nd 3, ends in 3 except 13, 113...: -rd everything else: -th (also 0, most people say zeroth but nobody really feels comfortable with it.) However they came to be, there's no mental load in applying them and nobody who speaks English natively ever much thinks about it.

innocenat 8y ago
This. Come from country who use Type 0 (i.e. no plural whatsoever), English is already complicated and make no sense at first.
acjohnson55 8y ago
Yeah, totally agree that there are plenty of things that don't make sense in English. The grammar is easy, but the sure number of irregular froms has got to be really difficult to deal with. At least the rules for plurals in some of the more complex examples are reegular.

jcranmer 8y ago

The general term for this is grammatical number. English gets by with just singular and plural, but this is by no means universal across different languages. A singular/dual/plural breakdown is quite common as well--Arabic, for example. You can also have a paucal form to represent "few", with or without the dual as well (Arabic has dual and paucal, Russian just has the paucal). On top of this base strata are some more choices. You have some choices to make for 0 (English says that 0 gets a plural form, French believes it to be singular). You can also choose how the rules differ when you get to systematic naming for large numbers--do you lump it in with many, or do you reuse the rules for the small numbers when they show up in larger numbers? Note that systematic naming doesn't have to be based on base-10 (say, Danish), nor does the start of systematic names need to happen on a clean boundary (English starts it at 13, for example).

thaumasiotes 8y ago
> nor does the start of systematic names need to happen on a clean boundary (English starts it at 13, for example) It'd be hard to make a case for regular number words starting at thirteen. 13, 14, and 15 are all exceptional in that the numbers 3/4/5 are not usually pronounced "thirt", "fort", or "fiff". You could make a case for starting at 16, but even then it isn't normal for the lower place value to precede the higher one. At 21 you see words that are formed in a fully regular way, but the roots for 20, 30, and 50 are still odd, now being "twen", "thir", and "fiff". From 60 on you can construct number names just by knowing the numbers 1-50 and the place values (hundred / thousand / million / etc.).
- beojan 8y ago
  The systematic ordinals start at one. The word one becomes first, two becomes second, three becomes third, and everything else has th appended.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    This commment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17165382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17165382 ) accurately slams the extreme complexity of English ordinals in specific, and is sibling to my parent comment. In order to call the ordinals perfectly systematic, you need to take the irregular cardinals as a given. If you're having trouble there, you'll have trouble with the ordinals too.