4 ms·
Some French speaking countries use a more logic term for higher numbers. In Belgium and Switzerland 99 would be nonante-neuf which is ninety-nine. My uneducate
by Adrig 4y ago
Some French speaking countries use a more logic term for higher numbers. In Belgium and Switzerland 99 would be nonante-neuf which is ninety-nine.
My uneducated guess is that at the time, it was easier to keep the base 20 to visualize a higher number. Just like we say "a few dozen eggs" to get an overall sense of the volume, it made more sense to keep it that way instead of a more arithmetic approach. Not sure why it never evolved, tho.
- dorchadas 4y ago> a more logic term Logical according to whom? Why is base 10 more logical than any of the other bases? I'd argue it's not, it's simply that it's what we're used to so we think it's more logical.
- Adrig 4y agoYou're right, “coherent” would be more appropriate here
- wonderbore 4y agoThe logical term is one that conceives the best amount of information with the least amount of phonemes. 4 20 10 9 isn’t it.
- dorchadas 4y agoI don't agree with that use of 'logical'. That would, if anything, be 'efficient'. But languages aren't efficient; in fact, there's actually some evidence to the opposite - that languages have built in redundancy to make it easier to pick back up a conversation if part of a sentence is missed. This has been proposed as part of the origin from noun classes. But I was more going on to the fact that 'base 10' is somehow more logical than any other base as a chosen one for natural languages. I see no reason why that is so.