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I am not sure that it's a function of English language per se. I speak several language and it's the same story with all of them and one of those languages is S

I am not sure that it's a function of English language per se. I speak several language and it's the same story with all of them and one of those languages is Slavic so it comes from a very different root. That said, Greece is a rock throw away and I think the ancient Greek mathematicians(Pythagoras primarily) might have something to do with it: The Egyptians were the first known to use symbols to represents parts of something but it wasn't until the Greeks introduced fractions to express a quantifiable representation of sub-divisions of a unit, making the sub-division it's own unit: you need 4 * 1/4-th's of something to make it to 1 complete unit. Then again, I could be wrong.

pmontra 2y ago
In Italy we would translate "two 2s, zero 3s, and one 5" as "due 2, zero 3 e un 5". No plurals for the numbers. By the way "un" is the "a" article and not the "uno" number. Using the number would sound more than strange. Languages are just what they settled down to be, until they change little by little every day.
- axegon_ 2y ago
  I speak Spanish, but it's a different story there: "dos doses, zero treses y un cinco". Numbers can have plurals, which from what I understand is not the case in Italian. Weird cause the languages are very similar in general - I can somewhat easily understand Italian, particularly reading. Listening - not so much. But as far as grammar, they seem to be almost identical. Same with French grammar though Spanish has the equivalent of the English present continuous tense and French does not(also worth mentioning that I don't speak French either, that's what my mum has told me).
  - Tainnor 2y ago
    Linguistically, Spanish and French are Western Romance languages and technically should be closer to each other than Spanish and Italian. However, French also underwent certain significant changes (possibly due to Germanic and/or Celtic influence) that most other Romance languages didn't, hence why it seems more "foreign". But there are a lot of common things between French and Spanish that Italian doesn't share (e.g. the way plurals are formed with "s", or particular sound changes, like adding "e" in front of certain consonant clusters, c.f. Spanish "estrella", French "étoile", but Italian "stella") > But as far as grammar, they seem to be almost identical. Apart from the different plurals, probably the biggest difference to me seems to be that Spanish has three different past tenses, including indefinido, while the corresponding tenses in Italian and French (passato remoto / passé simple) have completely fallen out of use except of highly formal contexts (or, in the case of Italian, certain Southern dialects). Instead you'd just use the perfect.
    - axegon_ 2y ago
      Well yeah... But overall numbers in French are a bit... Weird... By the time you are a teenager, you have the math skills of someone with a PhD in Calculus just to be able to say how old you are. No wonder some of the best mathematicians in history were French ;)

pmontra 2y ago

In Italy we would translate "two 2s, zero 3s, and one 5" as "due 2, zero 3 e un 5". No plurals for the numbers. By the way "un" is the "a" article and not the "uno" number. Using the number would sound more than strange. Languages are just what they settled down to be, until they change little by little every day.

axegon_ 2y ago
I speak Spanish, but it's a different story there: "dos doses, zero treses y un cinco". Numbers can have plurals, which from what I understand is not the case in Italian. Weird cause the languages are very similar in general - I can somewhat easily understand Italian, particularly reading. Listening - not so much. But as far as grammar, they seem to be almost identical. Same with French grammar though Spanish has the equivalent of the English present continuous tense and French does not(also worth mentioning that I don't speak French either, that's what my mum has told me).
- Tainnor 2y ago
  Linguistically, Spanish and French are Western Romance languages and technically should be closer to each other than Spanish and Italian. However, French also underwent certain significant changes (possibly due to Germanic and/or Celtic influence) that most other Romance languages didn't, hence why it seems more "foreign". But there are a lot of common things between French and Spanish that Italian doesn't share (e.g. the way plurals are formed with "s", or particular sound changes, like adding "e" in front of certain consonant clusters, c.f. Spanish "estrella", French "étoile", but Italian "stella") > But as far as grammar, they seem to be almost identical. Apart from the different plurals, probably the biggest difference to me seems to be that Spanish has three different past tenses, including indefinido, while the corresponding tenses in Italian and French (passato remoto / passé simple) have completely fallen out of use except of highly formal contexts (or, in the case of Italian, certain Southern dialects). Instead you'd just use the perfect.
  - axegon_ 2y ago
    Well yeah... But overall numbers in French are a bit... Weird... By the time you are a teenager, you have the math skills of someone with a PhD in Calculus just to be able to say how old you are. No wonder some of the best mathematicians in history were French ;)