3 ms·

How about french? 99 is four twenties nineteen, 79 is sixty nineteen. Languages are fun and fascinating.

by slazaro 6y ago

shdon 6y ago
And since the French say ten nine instead of nineteen, it becomes four twenties ten nine.
- rswail 6y ago
  But nineteen is just "nine and ten" with the "and" removed. English has a word for twenty and its used in the French way "Four score and seven years" is "quatre-vingts et sept".
smcl 6y ago
I think your response to these language quirks can vary depending on your familiarity with the language: - to an outsider, learning that a concept exists: “that is an interesting thing” - to a beginner, trying to construct the right form or to detect it in quickly spoken speech: “this is annoying and I hate it” - to an intermediate speaker and beyond: “eh it’s maybe weird but whatever” I used to hate noun declension in Czech as a beginner (7 cases x plural/singular = 14 forms a noun can take[0]) because it’s intimidating and unintuitive for an English speaker, but now I’m at the “meh” stage. [0] - then consider that there are 3 genders, and each gender has a handful of “models” (patterns for declining words that look a certain way), and also a bunch of exceptions. Not the hardest thing in the world, for sure. But it’s definitely a bit of a pain
- bombcar 6y ago
  I’ve always thought it’s interesting how the languages like that (most of the Romance languages have declensions and such) add error detection and even correction - you can figure out parts that are missing or got changed by the lack of agreement between the various forms. You may not be able to correct it from the Information available but you’ll know something went wrong.
dvh 6y ago
Still better then russians: ten, twenty, thirty, bag of furs, fifty, sixty, ...
mywittyname 6y ago
This explains, to me, at least, the whole "four score and seven years ago" speech. I always wondered the reason behind such a silly way of presenting a number, I just figured it was archaic. Nope, just French.

How about french? 99 is four twenties nineteen, 79 is sixty nineteen. Languages are fun and fascinating.

shdon 6y ago

And since the French say ten nine instead of nineteen, it becomes four twenties ten nine.

rswail 6y ago
But nineteen is just "nine and ten" with the "and" removed. English has a word for twenty and its used in the French way "Four score and seven years" is "quatre-vingts et sept".

smcl 6y ago

I think your response to these language quirks can vary depending on your familiarity with the language: - to an outsider, learning that a concept exists: “that is an interesting thing” - to a beginner, trying to construct the right form or to detect it in quickly spoken speech: “this is annoying and I hate it” - to an intermediate speaker and beyond: “eh it’s maybe weird but whatever” I used to hate noun declension in Czech as a beginner (7 cases x plural/singular = 14 forms a noun can take[0]) because it’s intimidating and unintuitive for an English speaker, but now I’m at the “meh” stage. [0] - then consider that there are 3 genders, and each gender has a handful of “models” (patterns for declining words that look a certain way), and also a bunch of exceptions. Not the hardest thing in the world, for sure. But it’s definitely a bit of a pain

bombcar 6y ago
I’ve always thought it’s interesting how the languages like that (most of the Romance languages have declensions and such) add error detection and even correction - you can figure out parts that are missing or got changed by the lack of agreement between the various forms. You may not be able to correct it from the Information available but you’ll know something went wrong.

dvh 6y ago

Still better then russians: ten, twenty, thirty, bag of furs, fifty, sixty, ...

mywittyname 6y ago

This explains, to me, at least, the whole "four score and seven years ago" speech. I always wondered the reason behind such a silly way of presenting a number, I just figured it was archaic. Nope, just French.