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The French use the vigesimal system (base-20). I learned this fact while learning Norwegian, which doesn't use a base-20 system anymore, expect almost everybody
by dgut 6y ago
The French use the vigesimal system (base-20). I learned this fact while learning Norwegian, which doesn't use a base-20 system anymore, expect almost everybody above 50y still use the Danish system (also base-20, like French), which was indeed very confusing.
In Spanish it's more or less the same as French when it comes to naming numbers, except more predictable spelling and it's base-10: dos (two), doce (twelve), ocho (eight), dieciocho (eighteen), ochenta (eighty), noventa (nighty), cien (one hundred) and so on.
In the case of e.g dos (two) and veinte (twenty), were there doesn't seem to be any relationship, the root of veinte is "dwi" (dos), but it lost a sound somewhere along the way. Two, dos, duo, dual, double, all share the same indo-european root.
- dirtnugget 6y agoWhy isn’t 60 in French something like tres-vingt? French is a language full of exceptions which need to be memorised and which are rather random. Excuse me but I understand vigesimal (base-20) like a potency. The French are not following through on that at all. If you have a look at Mayan math you will understand how to do "proper" vigesimal. With proper I mean that what we consider single digit numbers (0-9) which is a range of ten, to be the basis of single digits. The Mayans actually could represent first twenty (0-19) as one "single digit". Their idea of numbers was just much more composable than ours is. I’ll try to give a short explanation: There are three "words" which make Mayan numbers. A dot, a line and a shell. The dot represents a one, the bar represents a five, the shell represents a zero. 5 dots make a line (similar to Roman) One dot above one shell makes twenty. (1 * 20). Like we consider a one and a zero (10) to be greater than 9. One dot above one shell above one shell makes 400 (1 * 20 * 20) One dot above one dot above one dot makes 421 ((1 * 20 * 20) + (1 * 20) + (1 * 1)) Compared to the potency of this mathematical language the idea that French are using vigesimal is laughable, because they only denote their 80 like this. It’s quite fascinating how logical and functional their math was, they were using the potency of zeros long before we Europeans discovered that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F53HuD2lcb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F53HuD2lcb8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_numerals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_numerals