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> As a native Polish speaker it was very strange to me when English speakers say things like "twelve hundreds" for numbers between 1000 and 2000 Minor nitpick
by nkrisc 7y ago
> As a native Polish speaker it was very strange to me when English speakers say things like "twelve hundreds" for numbers between 1000 and 2000
Minor nitpick but people will say, "twelve hundred" not "twelve hundreds" (at least in all of my experience growing up in the US). The reason being, you have eight hundred, nine hundred, (we don't talk about ten hundred), eleven hundred, twelve hundred, and so on. It's kind of like a continuance of how the hundreds below 1000 are named.
Interestingly you will hear sometimes "ten hundred" when talking about address systems where each block increases the address by 100. Such as, "the ten hundred block of Example street." But I've never heard it anywhere else.
- Zanni 7y agoMinor nitpick nitpick: except for years, e.g., I don't remember exactly when the Magna Carta was signed, but it was somewhere in the twelve-hundreds.
- swimfar 7y agoThat's not really an exception for years. It means something different. Twelve hundred is a single number, 1200. Twelve-hundreds is a range from 1200-1299. You can also do the same thing with many other ranges (e.g. house numbers).
- nkrisc 7y agoI'm talking only about the numbers, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, etc. That is, counting by hundreds on the hundred. So your point does not contradict mine.
- gpvos 7y agoThat would actually be practical for naming years in the current century, e.g. twenty hundred nineteen for the current year sounds much better to my (Dutch) ears than two thousand nineteen. We do say twenty nineteen, of course, but the intermediate "full name" step of twenty hundred nineteen is never used, making it a bit weird.