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It's no where near as clear as the chinese version which is literally five tens though. To know fifty is 50 and five tens you have to already know both the mean
by rtkwe 7y ago
It's no where near as clear as the chinese version which is literally five tens though. To know fifty is 50 and five tens you have to already know both the meaning of number places and what fifty means, really hard to derive from just the name or seeing 50 written out.
- interfixus 7y agoWell, I'm not a native speaker. All I can say is it was crystal clear to me when I began learning English at age ten.
- svachalek 7y agoAs a native speaker I'm with you. Always seemed pretty obvious to me too, especially above 5 with six-ty seven-ty etc. To be fair though, Chinese says/writes 15 as ten-five which is much more obvious than the difference between five-ty and five-teen. It's interesting in spoken English the emphasis flips between first to second syllable though.
- rtkwe 7y agoIt's not super hidden but you also already understood numbers at that age too presumably so you already had most of the puzzle. As a native speaker I don't think I ever broke the words down like that or had them broken down to me like that (then again this would have been ages ago so maybe it was and I don't remember).