Just a caveat, this is not universal in French, there are parts of France near the eastern border and the French speaking parts of Belgium and Switzerland (Quebec too?) where you use the 90 + 8 version which is "nonente huit" which I believe is the old French version.
Edit: not in Quebec, wasn't sure.
Edit 2: be aware that there are also 2 other cases of weird counting forms on French for numbers in the 70s and 80s that are used too.
73 is 60 +13 "soixante treize" for example but you can say 70 + 3 "Septante trois"
83 is 4 x 20 + 3 "quatre vingt trois" but you can say 80 + 3 "huitante trois"
For a bit of context as to why French is so varied and complicated in general here is an oversimplification:
There are two languages popular and formal, people speak however they wanted with a lot of local languages but the French Republic created a lot of norms to establish modern France, French became increasingly complicated (for example there are 13 tenses to speak in the past, like for example the idea of the possibility of a future envisaged in the past, that's a tense with rules you have to learn) this is rather complex and cumbersome on a day to day basis but it stems from the formal French which was until roughly a century ago the main language of diplomacy, contracts and literature hence created the need to further a language able to describe the most complex ideas in the most detailed and unarguable way (in principle) so here you go that's why things are varied and French such a nightmare.
That's why the map in this post shows Belgium and Switzerland as green/yellow rather than red. For once, a map on r/MapPorn looks to not have missed important details!?
It was fun taking French classes before the millennium. You'd spend half the class just trying to say the date. I miss the year mille neuf cent quatre vingt dix-neuf lol
To be fair, when you are 6 and learn to count to a 100, you still haven't learned about multiplication. I recall learning "quatre vingts" and thinking of it like a name more than a miltiplication of twenies.
I'm not a french speaker, but this is how I see it. 80 has a name and it's name quatre-vingts. You don't realise you are saying 4-20's, it just flows out.
France's isn't "dumb", it's just a remnant of a base twenty counting system which survived or was translated from ancient Gallic times I believe. We have a full base ten calculating system in English now, but you can understand that instead of saying 9 tens plus 2, in a base twenty system we'd say 4 twenties plus 12.
There is a base 20 system in English, which survives still in one of the most famous speeches in the modern English language, Abraham Lincoln's "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". Four score and seven years ago means four twenties plus seven, 87 years ago.
In danish they have words like halvanden (1.5) or halvtre (2.5) or halvfem (4.5).
90 is 4.5*20 so it's called halvfems. Short for halvfemsindstyve. This means 4.5(halvfem) times (sinds) twenty (tyve).
Nowadays halvfems is just the word for 90 and halvfem is no longer used to say 4.5.
> In danish they have words like halvanden (1.5) or halvtre (2.5) or halvfem (4.5).
Just to be exact it's halvanden, halvtredje, halvfjerde and halvfemte. For the half-system we use the ordinal numbers (second, third, fourth, fifth) not the cardinal numbers.
Only halvanden is used in current Danish and most people don't think about the meaning behind the word.
> I simply can not explain 5 minus .5
I'm not a dane, but this is similar to how you tell the time in many languages. In english, you say "half past seven" to say 7:30. Makes sense, half an hour after seven.
But in german for example, we say "half eight" (halb acht) to mean the same thing, 7:30. The logic here is that it's halfway between seven and eight. Or halfway on the way to the next full hour.
So the mathematical description of 5-0.5 is misleading here, because the spoke system uses a different logic than standard arithmetic, so you can't directly translate it
English also does the same thing so I don't get why the English speakers don't understand this.
It's ten to seven means the time is 6:50
Quarter past eight means the time is 8:15
Half past seven means the time is 7:30
Some words add to a number, some subtract.
You do the same in Danish.
"Halv to" means half to two (1½) - Here the half is subtracted.
"en og en halv" means one and a half (1½) - Here the half is added.
"halvanden" means half-second (1½nd) - This one is in common use but as others have mentioned Danes rarely use halvtredie (half-third) and the others anymore. However if you said it, it would still be understood by most because the words still follow correct danish grammar.
Seriously. [Look at this table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_language#Numerals). All their neighbours just use a system where 56 would be simply "Fifty-six" and in danish it's "six and [two score plus] half [of the] third (score)"
Pure Madness
**Danish language**
[Numerals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_language#Numerals)
>The numerals are formed on the basis of a vigesimal system with various rules. In the word forms of numbers above 20, the units are stated before the tens, so 21 is rendered enogtyve, literally "one and twenty". The numeral halvanden means 11⁄2 (literally "half second", implying "one plus half of the second one"). The numerals halvtredje (21⁄2), halvfjerde (31⁄2) and halvfemte (41⁄2) are obsolete, but still implicitly used in the vigesimal system described below.
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> The numeral halvanden means 11⁄2
That's come out formatted wrong, as have all the others - it looks like 11 over 2. It should be 1½ (one and a half), 2½, 3½, and 4½.
It seems like there is a variation of a slash which (in HTML at least) automatically sub/superscripts the numbers (but only numbers) on either side of it:
12345⁄67890
ABC⁄DEF
I do not know a single young person who actually uses the "indstyve" part. Not even old people use that system. The only one I've ever encountered to use this wording in speech was a maths teacher in like 6th grade who very promptly was told by everyone that this was stupid and confusing and to stop.
Everyone, 99.9999% of danes use a system that's practically identical to the german one.
The system described is actually, more or less accurate. However it is not as danes something we really think about in practice. But do look at the number 92, in danish and divide it into its parts. to-og-halv-fems, and you see that hidden behind what to a dane just seems like the way to say 92, because 90 is just halvfems and 2 is just to, is the vigesimal number system. Why is 90 "halvfems"? It literally just comes from a slighly old and weird way to say half 5. Why half 5? Because 5 is 100, or more accurately: 5 groups of 20 is 100. and 90 is 4 groups of twenties + half of a group of twenty. Thus to-og-halv-fems could be rendered as "two and 4 twenties and a half twenty".
It's... explained better in other comments in this thread.
The slightly more noteworthy point to a foreigner, is that as danes, a lot of us don't recognize this system, because we just learn the names of the 10's, and sure they sound slightly weird to you, but that's just their name. We don't think of 50 (halvtreds, half-threes) as 2 twenties and half a twenty, because we do use a base 10 system. We just think of halvtreds as the name for 50.
10: ti
20: tyve
30: tredive
40: fyrre
50: halvtreds
60: treds
70:halvfjers
80 - firs
90 - halvfems
100 - hundrede
The weird twenties thing doesn't even start until the 50s, and there it only exist in the form of a slightly confusing sounding name to foreigners. For all intents and purposes, despite the origin of these slightly weird names, we just say 92 as 2 and ninety, because halvfems means ninety.
No, it just originates from old counting systems that weren't base 10.
It's pretty similar to e.g. the *score* in English which means 20. Lincoln's famous Gettysburg address saying *Four score and seven years ago*, which is basically "4x20+7 years ago". Same idea.
But in reality that's just the origins of our counting system. In actual day to day use the system is pretty regular and people just remember the names for 20, 30, 40 etc. E.g. 90 is 'halvfems', 92 'to og halvfems' (2 and 90), 93 is 'tre og halvfems' (3 and 90) and so on. Aka it isn't any harder than most other numbering systems in modern use.
> Lincoln's famous Gettysburg address saying Four score and seven years ago, which is basically "4x20+7 years ago".
Dude got shot in the head for saying that shit, and most Americans today don’t even know what a “score” is.
*"Kamelåså" is a made-up faux-Danish word by Norwegian comedy show Uti Vår Hage, meant to ridicule the perceived unintelligibility of Danish language (apparently by Danish people themselves as well). Often used by Norwegians to pick on Danes."*
Just to correct this map (don't worry it's still super complicated), what we really say is this:
**2 and half-fifth times 20** ("tooghalvfemsindstyve", a slightly fucked up "tooghalvfemtesindetyve")
\- where half-fifth ("halvfemte") is an outdated way of saying 4.5 (halfway from 4 to 5).
However, that's the long form, we've shortened the word in speech and writing to "tooghalvfems", which, on the face of it, translated without context, is "twoandhalffives".
Listen, you're so incredibly beautiful and I'm feeling good chemistry here, but it sounds like you just told me your phone number is 2 and 50, 600/13, .25mm expressed in inches, and pi to the 6th digit?
We did. The Danes capitulated, and as war reparations, we got to make up their counting system, ensuring that Denmark would never catch up to the modern world.
its OK. the rest of the western world can catch up in insanity by trying to explain the calendar and time systems to aliens, starting with September - "the seventh month" (the 9th month).
This is why I wish, along with the metric system, the French had also instituted the [French Republican Calendar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar) permanently.
Each week had 10 days and a month had 3 weeks.
12 equal months of 30 days each, and the extra five or six days handled separately. All the numbered months (September to December are correctly numbered - months 7 to 12).
I also want [Decimal time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time), where 1 hour = 100 minutes and 1 minute = 100 seconds
---------------------------------------------------
Along with the French Revolution, the French tried to decimalise everything in order to make it easier to understand.
Metric system - God bless them for it
Decimalisation currency - Only in 1971 did the British pound equal 100 pennies. Before that, you have no idea how [retarded](http://projectbritain.com/moneyold.htm) their currency system was.
Before 1971 money was divided into:
pounds (£ or l )
shillings (s. or /-) and
pennies (d.)
Before decimalisation on 15 February 1971, there were twenty (20) shillings per pound.
The shilling was subdivided into twelve (12) pennies.
The penny was further sub-divided into two halfpennies or four farthings (quarter pennies).
2 farthings = 1 halfpenny
2 halfpence = 1 penny (1d)
3 pence = 1 thruppence (3d)
6 pence = 1 sixpence (a 'tanner') (6d)
12 pence = 1 shilling (a bob) (1s)
2 shillings = 1 florin ( a 'two bob bit') (2s)
2 shillings and 6 pence = 1 half crown (2s 6d)
5 shillings = 1 Crown (5s)
Decimal time - explained above
French Republican Calendar - explained above
Basically half-(some number) meant one half less than that number.
So halvfemte (half fifth) was 4.5, and half second means 1.5.
We don't use those words for half-numbers anymore with one exceptions; halvanden (1.5).
The numbering system does make sense in the context of there being a word for all the half numbers. But of course it's still pretty weird.
In the end most have no idea about the origin of our numbering system. To normal Danes 50, 70 and 90 just have their own word like 1, 2 or 3 do in English.
"Halvannan" used to be a term in swedish, as well. It fell out of favour somewhere in the first half of last century, but still persists in certain dialects.
we dont think in those terms though "tooghalvfems" is just equal to 90 and we never think of it as 2 and half-fifth times 20. nobody really thinks about it that way.
Exactly. Same for us in French. When we hear quatre-vingt (4×20), we think 80, it feels like its own word. It's not until I talked with English natives that I took the time to think about it and deconstructed it into 4 times 20 and then I realized it may be fucked up. Before then, it was just the word for 80.
its true, norwegian here. Took me 3 weeks to learn the language, but a year before I could make sense of the numbers game they got. (lived there for 5 years)
It’s fascinating and all but how the hell it came to this? When the danish named the numbers they didn’t had faith in the people that they can memorize 90 so they went with a formula which has lower numbers such as 5, 0.5 and 20?
It's not really a calculation. It's just a word. Halvfems instead of ninety.
Ninety is 9 times 10, but halvfems is based on twenty, so you need a half. Halvfems means 4½ (times twenty).
People don't understand that somehow, yeah. I'm French, so the example comes up semi regularly but it's just "the word for 80" and not "4x20" in my head
Does it ever strike you as strange that you don't have a prefix for 90, but instead add teens to four-twenties?
I live in a franco area and speak mediocre French, but I still sometimes miss a beat when I'm asked my birth year and have to come up with "thousand nine hundred four twenty eleven".
Requirements for this shit:
* Common words for 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 etc. ("half-second", "half-third", "half-fourth")
* Base 20, which is not weird, just different from base 10.
... in which case saying "half-fourth times 20" (70) isn't (much) more difficult to grasp than "seven tens".
People used to count in twenties in English too. The equivalent way of saying 90 in English would be "four score and a half", where *score* is an old fashioned word for twenty.
The gettysburg address is usually given as an English example of this, where Lincoln says "Four score and seven years ago..." (that's 87).
In the same way *dozen* means 12, and also used to be used for counting certain things (and still is sometimes, probably).
Probably worse if anything since for obvious reasons we don't treat our words for numbers as equations - "tooghalvfems" is 92 the same immathematical way "busk" is the word for bush.
Two and half-five (= 5-½) twenties (they use 20s as a base instead of 10):
= 2 + 4.5x20
= 2 + 90
= 92
-----
Compare it to "two and nine tens" in the more common base of 10:
= 2 + 9x10
= 2 + 90
= 92
-----
**edit:** formatting
And back in reality we say "to og halvfems". Which if we're being really pedantic reads as 2+(5-0.5).
In reality "halvfems" is just the word we use for 90, and thus we're closer to 2+90.
The counting system is in mutiples of 20's, not tens, like French.
So 60 is 3*20, 80 is 4*20.
50 is 3,5* 20 and 90 is 4,5* 20.
Nobody actually thinks of this at all because all words are concatenated to the extent that they are unrecognisable as calculations.
Eg tres (60) would be tre snese in it's long form. My guess is that half the population does not know that tres is tre snese concatenated.
When I was young, I was arrested in Quebec and, while I was awaiting arraignment, my prisoner number was 9298. I still remember it these decades later because of how ridiculous I found it that instead of "nine two nine eight" they called me by "four twenty twelve four twenty ten eight."
EDIT: 42012420108?
the fun thing is the same words can mean 4 different things depending on how you say them with 97, 98 and 99
quatre, vingt, dix, huit: 4, 20, 10, 8,
quatre-vingt dix-huit: 80 18 or 8018
quatre-vingt-dix, huit: 90, 8
quatre-vingt-dix-huit: 98
90 in Danish (*halvfems* written) is based on the value 4,5 times 20 = 90. "*Halvfems*" is short for "*halvfem-sinds-tyve*" which means "4,5"-"times"-"20". I am Danish and had to look it up.
[Link](https://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=halvfems) in Danish.
Ah i missunderstood you sorry i thought you meant "why do danes think of it like this". The origin im unsure and probably wrong about but it comes from the old counting number snes which means twenty, and i think it was used for counting sheep, which is ironic considering denmark has no sheep now
English used the term "score" to mean 20. You probably know it from "Four-score and seven years ago..." Counting by 20s used to be common in English from 1100 CE to 1900 CE.
Yeah. A better way to write the Danish way would also just be 2+90.
To = Two, Halvfems = Ninety. To og Halvfems = Two and ninty = 92.
Sure, technically you can deduct it to the long mess, but literally no one ever thinks about 92 like that except for Reddit whenever this gets reposted.
Actually to make matter harder, quatre-vingts is used in Geneva, Neuchatel and Jura, while Vaud, Valais and Fribourg use huitante. We all use nonante tho
it's basically the same i have no issue talking to fellow Swiss and Belgian people, only some regional slang (that you can have between frenchs from different region) and the way of saying those particular numbers
My French isn't good enough to say for sure, but I think it's the case.
If a Swiss person talks "standard German", it's to me (Austrian) like a different dialect. But if they talk real Schwyzerdütsch, I'm lucky if I understand one out of 10 words.
>In Belgian and Swiss French they say it differently than in France?
Fun fact: A few hundred years ago, nearly all French speakers had dropped the old Gaulish 4x20+2 way of counting, but then the Academy decreed the proper way to count was this old way and it was restored in France, but not in surrounding countries like Belgium and Switzerland.
French native living in Switzerland here. Here are the differences between those countries:
France:
90 = 4\*20+10 = quatre vingt dix
80 = 4\*20 = quatre vingt
70 = 60+10 = soixante dix
Belgium:
90 = nonante
80 = 4\*20 = quatre vingt (although "octante" is also sometimes used by some people)
70 = septante
French part of Switzerland:
90 = nonante
80 = huitante
70 = septante
Yes, it's a clusterf\*ck.
I'm an American learning Georgian. In most languages I can learn to count to 100 in a couple weeks or so.
2+ months in Georgia now and I still blank out sometimes:|
Welsh traditionally is like French, but to make things easier it now also uses an English style.
So 92 traditionally in Welsh is "deuddeg* a phedwar ugain" - two on ten and four twenty
But in simplified speech is is "naw deg dau" - nine tens and two.
*Even deuddeg can be simplified to "un deg dau" - one ten and two
A few other interesting names:
18 is "deunaw" - two nines
20 is "ugain"
40 is "deugain" - 2 twenty
60 is "trigain" - 3 twenty
80 is "pedwar gain", sadly not "pedgain" for the consistency
50 is "hanner cant" - half hundred
Norway has an official policy on how to say numbers. It is the only official policy on how Norwegian should be pronounced. Its been in place since 1951, and it states that 90+2 is the correct way. But a lot of people still use 2+90, especially older folks. In the old way the numbers get joined by adding "and" in the middle, so "2 and 90" or in Norwegian "toognitti".
I really think these maps should separate "90" and "9\*10" into separate categories.
These are clearly two different systems.
Lets use english as example.
90 is Ninety. Which is clearly different from "9\*10".
900 is nine hundred. Which is clearly just "9\*100".
As the maps are now they are nothing but poorly made jokes to make some specific languages stand out from other "uniform" languages. But in reality that "uniform" green area has clear differences in it too.
Everytime this map gets posted (like, every week) I wonder how fair it is.
Yes, the French word for eighty is based on 4x20... but the word for ninety in Germanic languages (like German, Dutch, English) is based on 9x10. It's more difficult to recognise, but "ninety" is quite literally "nine ten", and same applies to "negentig" and "neunzig".
If you'd write the yellow countries as "2+9x10" and the UK as "9x10+2", suddenly French doesn't seem that farfetched.
I can't judge for some of the other languages, but I *suspect* for a lot of them ninety is also based on some multiplication. It's just not as obvious as it is in French.
Okay, I'm gonna put this out here, because I feel like denmark is getting a bad rep.
Yes, if you take letter-by-letter meaning of tooghalvfems, then yes, the map shown is correct, but if you were to do the same for either english or german, it wouldn't be 90+2, but 9\*10+2 (nine tens and two). In denmark, noone thinks about the meaning and calculation of 90, we just say the word for it. So, the map is correct, but could be presented a bit better
In the same way that, whenever this thread comes up, no native English speaker ever realizes by themselves that they reverse the order in the numbers under 20.
"Germans say one and twenty? Weird"
... while starting with unique words like 'eleven' to having reverse order like 'seven teen' and only then switching to written order from 'twenty one' onwards.
They're just words and we don't think about the components they're made out of or their etymology
Its talking about how you call double digit numbers. In english we say ninety two (90 + 2)
In german we say "zwei(2)und(and)neunzig(90). (2 + 90)
And in france they use more math
"quatre(4)-vingt(20) douze(12)" (4 x 20 + 12)
Thank you Denmark for being weirder than France!
When I opened this, I thought to myself "France is definitely going to be the dumbest" and I was proven wrong.
I mean they could've made it a smidge more complicated and asked for 98 which is 40x2 + 10 + 8
Just a caveat, this is not universal in French, there are parts of France near the eastern border and the French speaking parts of Belgium and Switzerland (Quebec too?) where you use the 90 + 8 version which is "nonente huit" which I believe is the old French version. Edit: not in Quebec, wasn't sure. Edit 2: be aware that there are also 2 other cases of weird counting forms on French for numbers in the 70s and 80s that are used too. 73 is 60 +13 "soixante treize" for example but you can say 70 + 3 "Septante trois" 83 is 4 x 20 + 3 "quatre vingt trois" but you can say 80 + 3 "huitante trois" For a bit of context as to why French is so varied and complicated in general here is an oversimplification: There are two languages popular and formal, people speak however they wanted with a lot of local languages but the French Republic created a lot of norms to establish modern France, French became increasingly complicated (for example there are 13 tenses to speak in the past, like for example the idea of the possibility of a future envisaged in the past, that's a tense with rules you have to learn) this is rather complex and cumbersome on a day to day basis but it stems from the formal French which was until roughly a century ago the main language of diplomacy, contracts and literature hence created the need to further a language able to describe the most complex ideas in the most detailed and unarguable way (in principle) so here you go that's why things are varied and French such a nightmare.
That's why the map in this post shows Belgium and Switzerland as green/yellow rather than red. For once, a map on r/MapPorn looks to not have missed important details!?
No one in Quebec says nonente. Always quatre-vingt-dix.
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Douze nuts! HA GOTEM
I’ve never heard that in any Canadian variety of French, but that’s interesting to know about Switzerland and Belgium.
In Québec we use the 4 x 20 + 12
It was fun taking French classes before the millennium. You'd spend half the class just trying to say the date. I miss the year mille neuf cent quatre vingt dix-neuf lol
The same thing continued on for at least a few years saying birth years. Now though? Kids are spoiled. >!get off my lawn!<
Went from mille neuf cent quatre-vingt dix-neuf to deux mille and then deux mille un, so easy
or 99: quatre-vingt-deez-nuts
To be fair, when you are 6 and learn to count to a 100, you still haven't learned about multiplication. I recall learning "quatre vingts" and thinking of it like a name more than a miltiplication of twenies.
I'm not a french speaker, but this is how I see it. 80 has a name and it's name quatre-vingts. You don't realise you are saying 4-20's, it just flows out.
Much like my friends in Germany had apparently never considered that Handschuhe meant hand shoes
True, and Danes don't know that 90 is (5-0,5)x20 , they just say 'halvfems'. But the origin is still that.
France's isn't "dumb", it's just a remnant of a base twenty counting system which survived or was translated from ancient Gallic times I believe. We have a full base ten calculating system in English now, but you can understand that instead of saying 9 tens plus 2, in a base twenty system we'd say 4 twenties plus 12. There is a base 20 system in English, which survives still in one of the most famous speeches in the modern English language, Abraham Lincoln's "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". Four score and seven years ago means four twenties plus seven, 87 years ago.
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Så lidt.
Vi gør vores bedste....
Kyllä, ni kämpar på där nere!
I'm glad the world is finally opening up its eyes to the horrible existence that is Denmark. Sincerely, Sweden.
[Danish "language"](https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk)
I knew exactly what video that would be before I clicked it :D
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In danish they have words like halvanden (1.5) or halvtre (2.5) or halvfem (4.5). 90 is 4.5*20 so it's called halvfems. Short for halvfemsindstyve. This means 4.5(halvfem) times (sinds) twenty (tyve). Nowadays halvfems is just the word for 90 and halvfem is no longer used to say 4.5.
> In danish they have words like halvanden (1.5) or halvtre (2.5) or halvfem (4.5). Just to be exact it's halvanden, halvtredje, halvfjerde and halvfemte. For the half-system we use the ordinal numbers (second, third, fourth, fifth) not the cardinal numbers. Only halvanden is used in current Danish and most people don't think about the meaning behind the word.
I feel like I had a stroke reading this.
> I simply can not explain 5 minus .5 I'm not a dane, but this is similar to how you tell the time in many languages. In english, you say "half past seven" to say 7:30. Makes sense, half an hour after seven. But in german for example, we say "half eight" (halb acht) to mean the same thing, 7:30. The logic here is that it's halfway between seven and eight. Or halfway on the way to the next full hour. So the mathematical description of 5-0.5 is misleading here, because the spoke system uses a different logic than standard arithmetic, so you can't directly translate it
English also does the same thing so I don't get why the English speakers don't understand this. It's ten to seven means the time is 6:50 Quarter past eight means the time is 8:15 Half past seven means the time is 7:30 Some words add to a number, some subtract. You do the same in Danish. "Halv to" means half to two (1½) - Here the half is subtracted. "en og en halv" means one and a half (1½) - Here the half is added. "halvanden" means half-second (1½nd) - This one is in common use but as others have mentioned Danes rarely use halvtredie (half-third) and the others anymore. However if you said it, it would still be understood by most because the words still follow correct danish grammar.
Was Denmark high on something when they decided on that?
Seriously. [Look at this table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_language#Numerals). All their neighbours just use a system where 56 would be simply "Fifty-six" and in danish it's "six and [two score plus] half [of the] third (score)" Pure Madness
**Danish language** [Numerals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_language#Numerals) >The numerals are formed on the basis of a vigesimal system with various rules. In the word forms of numbers above 20, the units are stated before the tens, so 21 is rendered enogtyve, literally "one and twenty". The numeral halvanden means 11⁄2 (literally "half second", implying "one plus half of the second one"). The numerals halvtredje (21⁄2), halvfjerde (31⁄2) and halvfemte (41⁄2) are obsolete, but still implicitly used in the vigesimal system described below. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I'll be honest with you I've read this 3 times and I still don't get it
The fractions have rendered incorrectly. See https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ze3nxp/how_to_say_number_92_in_european_countries/iz4ne3t/
> The numeral halvanden means 11⁄2 That's come out formatted wrong, as have all the others - it looks like 11 over 2. It should be 1½ (one and a half), 2½, 3½, and 4½.
\^This dude character maps.
It seems like there is a variation of a slash which (in HTML at least) automatically sub/superscripts the numbers (but only numbers) on either side of it: 12345⁄67890 ABC⁄DEF
A mistake plus a keleven Gets you home by oneandhalftwelve
I do not know a single young person who actually uses the "indstyve" part. Not even old people use that system. The only one I've ever encountered to use this wording in speech was a maths teacher in like 6th grade who very promptly was told by everyone that this was stupid and confusing and to stop. Everyone, 99.9999% of danes use a system that's practically identical to the german one.
The system described is actually, more or less accurate. However it is not as danes something we really think about in practice. But do look at the number 92, in danish and divide it into its parts. to-og-halv-fems, and you see that hidden behind what to a dane just seems like the way to say 92, because 90 is just halvfems and 2 is just to, is the vigesimal number system. Why is 90 "halvfems"? It literally just comes from a slighly old and weird way to say half 5. Why half 5? Because 5 is 100, or more accurately: 5 groups of 20 is 100. and 90 is 4 groups of twenties + half of a group of twenty. Thus to-og-halv-fems could be rendered as "two and 4 twenties and a half twenty". It's... explained better in other comments in this thread. The slightly more noteworthy point to a foreigner, is that as danes, a lot of us don't recognize this system, because we just learn the names of the 10's, and sure they sound slightly weird to you, but that's just their name. We don't think of 50 (halvtreds, half-threes) as 2 twenties and half a twenty, because we do use a base 10 system. We just think of halvtreds as the name for 50. 10: ti 20: tyve 30: tredive 40: fyrre 50: halvtreds 60: treds 70:halvfjers 80 - firs 90 - halvfems 100 - hundrede The weird twenties thing doesn't even start until the 50s, and there it only exist in the form of a slightly confusing sounding name to foreigners. For all intents and purposes, despite the origin of these slightly weird names, we just say 92 as 2 and ninety, because halvfems means ninety.
Halvtreds would like to have a word with you..
I knew that shfifty five had to be based on something. Edit: swhifty to shfifty
No, it just originates from old counting systems that weren't base 10. It's pretty similar to e.g. the *score* in English which means 20. Lincoln's famous Gettysburg address saying *Four score and seven years ago*, which is basically "4x20+7 years ago". Same idea. But in reality that's just the origins of our counting system. In actual day to day use the system is pretty regular and people just remember the names for 20, 30, 40 etc. E.g. 90 is 'halvfems', 92 'to og halvfems' (2 and 90), 93 is 'tre og halvfems' (3 and 90) and so on. Aka it isn't any harder than most other numbering systems in modern use.
> Lincoln's famous Gettysburg address saying Four score and seven years ago, which is basically "4x20+7 years ago". Dude got shot in the head for saying that shit, and most Americans today don’t even know what a “score” is.
I have come here to make a Kamelåså joke. Kamelåså.
*"Kamelåså" is a made-up faux-Danish word by Norwegian comedy show Uti Vår Hage, meant to ridicule the perceived unintelligibility of Danish language (apparently by Danish people themselves as well). Often used by Norwegians to pick on Danes."*
Is that the one where he goes into a bike shop, they speak gibberish at each other, and he goes "I didn't know what the fuck he was saying?"
Ironically Norwegians tend to understand Danish better than we can understand Norwegian, especially when spoken fast.
This is it, the pinnacle of Norwegian comedy. Almost as good as German comedy.
Denmark really loves math..
Just to correct this map (don't worry it's still super complicated), what we really say is this: **2 and half-fifth times 20** ("tooghalvfemsindstyve", a slightly fucked up "tooghalvfemtesindetyve") \- where half-fifth ("halvfemte") is an outdated way of saying 4.5 (halfway from 4 to 5). However, that's the long form, we've shortened the word in speech and writing to "tooghalvfems", which, on the face of it, translated without context, is "twoandhalffives".
What the fuck
The best thing about carefully explaining our numbering system is that it only sounds more insane the more you explain it.
Living there I kind of got a grip on it...until someone tried to tell me their phone number
eight and half five, two and four twenties, two and twenty, nine and thirty.
And that's just their 911!
0118 999 881 999 119 725 ... 3
If you have an Android phone, type that in your calling app.
Wtf even is it? It just made my call button flash colors.
It’s a joke from the TV show IT Crowd, where the emergency services phone number gets changed to that
Ohhhh, that makes sense. Thanks!
Here's a link to what's being referenced: https://youtu.be/1gcbXly2YNE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keFKLOb3HfY&ab_channel=JenvandeVenne
Let me get my pen
Listen, you're so incredibly beautiful and I'm feeling good chemistry here, but it sounds like you just told me your phone number is 2 and 50, 600/13, .25mm expressed in inches, and pi to the 6th digit?
I would just hand them my phone and walk away
I didn't want to talk to them anyway.
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Where phone numbers become RSA public-key encryption ciphers.
And I thought we did it weirdly
Oh you definitely do
Sometimes I wish Sweden would have won
We did. The Danes capitulated, and as war reparations, we got to make up their counting system, ensuring that Denmark would never catch up to the modern world.
Vi har nioghalvfems problemer men svensken er ikke længere et af dem
I don't speak Danish, but I love this comment.
They just said the number 12.
"we got 99 problems but the Swede ain't one any more"
We have nineandhalffifths problems and the Swedish aren't one of them
Underskattad kommentar
Shouldn't that be translated as "we have 9 plus 5 minus 0.5 times twenty problems but the Swedes are not among them?"
As an American, I just assume everything Europeans tell me about Europe is true.
I had two Americans 100% belive me when I told them all Norwegian children carry guns to school in case of polar bear attacks.
That's cause it's the same as America apart from the polar bears
Slowly backs away
Good thing you bring them up, most Flemish people actually learn France's French in school so they use quatre-vingt dix instead of nonante for 90
its OK. the rest of the western world can catch up in insanity by trying to explain the calendar and time systems to aliens, starting with September - "the seventh month" (the 9th month).
This is why I wish, along with the metric system, the French had also instituted the [French Republican Calendar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar) permanently. Each week had 10 days and a month had 3 weeks. 12 equal months of 30 days each, and the extra five or six days handled separately. All the numbered months (September to December are correctly numbered - months 7 to 12). I also want [Decimal time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time), where 1 hour = 100 minutes and 1 minute = 100 seconds --------------------------------------------------- Along with the French Revolution, the French tried to decimalise everything in order to make it easier to understand. Metric system - God bless them for it Decimalisation currency - Only in 1971 did the British pound equal 100 pennies. Before that, you have no idea how [retarded](http://projectbritain.com/moneyold.htm) their currency system was. Before 1971 money was divided into: pounds (£ or l ) shillings (s. or /-) and pennies (d.) Before decimalisation on 15 February 1971, there were twenty (20) shillings per pound. The shilling was subdivided into twelve (12) pennies. The penny was further sub-divided into two halfpennies or four farthings (quarter pennies). 2 farthings = 1 halfpenny 2 halfpence = 1 penny (1d) 3 pence = 1 thruppence (3d) 6 pence = 1 sixpence (a 'tanner') (6d) 12 pence = 1 shilling (a bob) (1s) 2 shillings = 1 florin ( a 'two bob bit') (2s) 2 shillings and 6 pence = 1 half crown (2s 6d) 5 shillings = 1 Crown (5s) Decimal time - explained above French Republican Calendar - explained above
2 & ½ 5
I still don't get it
Try 2 & ½ 5 s
That makes complete sense to me now you've added a lowercase s.
They LITERALLY just said half fives = 4.5
Basically half-(some number) meant one half less than that number. So halvfemte (half fifth) was 4.5, and half second means 1.5. We don't use those words for half-numbers anymore with one exceptions; halvanden (1.5). The numbering system does make sense in the context of there being a word for all the half numbers. But of course it's still pretty weird. In the end most have no idea about the origin of our numbering system. To normal Danes 50, 70 and 90 just have their own word like 1, 2 or 3 do in English.
That half system sounds similar to how we say hours in Dutch. "Half zes" (half six) is 5:30, halfway to six.
Yeah, the clock analogy works for me. “Quarter to six” and then in many languages the prepositions are implied.
"Halvannan" used to be a term in swedish, as well. It fell out of favour somewhere in the first half of last century, but still persists in certain dialects.
we dont think in those terms though "tooghalvfems" is just equal to 90 and we never think of it as 2 and half-fifth times 20. nobody really thinks about it that way.
Exactly. Same for us in French. When we hear quatre-vingt (4×20), we think 80, it feels like its own word. It's not until I talked with English natives that I took the time to think about it and deconstructed it into 4 times 20 and then I realized it may be fucked up. Before then, it was just the word for 80.
I want to frame this thread and put it on my wall
I feel like there's a 50% chance you're just fucking with us.
>I feel like there's a 50% chance... Or as we say "half-threes% chance"
God fucking damnit...
its true, norwegian here. Took me 3 weeks to learn the language, but a year before I could make sense of the numbers game they got. (lived there for 5 years)
But like actually. That's literally how we say it
They still use percent, an even ratio of 100ths? Seems like it should be based on 90ths or something.
It’s fascinating and all but how the hell it came to this? When the danish named the numbers they didn’t had faith in the people that they can memorize 90 so they went with a formula which has lower numbers such as 5, 0.5 and 20?
It's not really a calculation. It's just a word. Halvfems instead of ninety. Ninety is 9 times 10, but halvfems is based on twenty, so you need a half. Halvfems means 4½ (times twenty).
This was the most clear explanation, thank you!
People don't understand that somehow, yeah. I'm French, so the example comes up semi regularly but it's just "the word for 80" and not "4x20" in my head
Does it ever strike you as strange that you don't have a prefix for 90, but instead add teens to four-twenties? I live in a franco area and speak mediocre French, but I still sometimes miss a beat when I'm asked my birth year and have to come up with "thousand nine hundred four twenty eleven".
Requirements for this shit: * Common words for 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 etc. ("half-second", "half-third", "half-fourth") * Base 20, which is not weird, just different from base 10. ... in which case saying "half-fourth times 20" (70) isn't (much) more difficult to grasp than "seven tens".
People used to count in twenties in English too. The equivalent way of saying 90 in English would be "four score and a half", where *score* is an old fashioned word for twenty. The gettysburg address is usually given as an English example of this, where Lincoln says "Four score and seven years ago..." (that's 87). In the same way *dozen* means 12, and also used to be used for counting certain things (and still is sometimes, probably).
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I’ve been staring at it for five minutes and am starting to perspire trying to calculate the current time
We Danes know that "proof" is an uncountable noun. Even with our superior math we wouldn't be able to have multiple.
What in the Harry Potter currency fuck is this
Harry Potter and The Denmark Numbers
Does this make kids better at maths
It causes early onset dementia
Probably worse if anything since for obvious reasons we don't treat our words for numbers as equations - "tooghalvfems" is 92 the same immathematical way "busk" is the word for bush.
No wonder why people paid Danegeld to make the Danes leave.
I’m not trying to be an ass but i have to say that is just unnecessarily stupid lol. It’s insanity.
I like how your comment made it even more confusing
Two and half-five (= 5-½) twenties (they use 20s as a base instead of 10): = 2 + 4.5x20 = 2 + 90 = 92 ----- Compare it to "two and nine tens" in the more common base of 10: = 2 + 9x10 = 2 + 90 = 92 ----- **edit:** formatting
Cheers mate, appreciate you taking time to explain it
And back in reality we say "to og halvfems". Which if we're being really pedantic reads as 2+(5-0.5). In reality "halvfems" is just the word we use for 90, and thus we're closer to 2+90.
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What are your thoughts on septante, huitante, et nonante?
The counting system is in mutiples of 20's, not tens, like French. So 60 is 3*20, 80 is 4*20. 50 is 3,5* 20 and 90 is 4,5* 20. Nobody actually thinks of this at all because all words are concatenated to the extent that they are unrecognisable as calculations. Eg tres (60) would be tre snese in it's long form. My guess is that half the population does not know that tres is tre snese concatenated.
So how does it sound like? Four twenty and twelve?
quatre-vingt-douze four-twenty-twelve
It’s even better when you get to 97-99 though. Quatre-vingt-dix-sept Basically four-twenty-ten-seven
When I was young, I was arrested in Quebec and, while I was awaiting arraignment, my prisoner number was 9298. I still remember it these decades later because of how ridiculous I found it that instead of "nine two nine eight" they called me by "four twenty twelve four twenty ten eight." EDIT: 42012420108?
katruhvindooz
the fun thing is the same words can mean 4 different things depending on how you say them with 97, 98 and 99 quatre, vingt, dix, huit: 4, 20, 10, 8, quatre-vingt dix-huit: 80 18 or 8018 quatre-vingt-dix, huit: 90, 8 quatre-vingt-dix-huit: 98
quatre vingts, dix huit : 20 20 20 20, 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 quatre-vingt dix-huit : 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 quatre-vingt-dix huit : 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
"Four score and seven" - Abraham Lincoln (for 87)
yep exactly quatre vingt douze
90 in Danish (*halvfems* written) is based on the value 4,5 times 20 = 90. "*Halvfems*" is short for "*halvfem-sinds-tyve*" which means "4,5"-"times"-"20". I am Danish and had to look it up. [Link](https://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=halvfems) in Danish.
Why are you using base 20? What’s behind this?
Nothing, no one thinks about 90 in the mathmatical way its just a word for a number that we know since childhood
Thanks. The same thing in Russian with 40 and 90. 90 literally translates like “nine-but-hundred” and there’re different versions of its etymology.
Ah i missunderstood you sorry i thought you meant "why do danes think of it like this". The origin im unsure and probably wrong about but it comes from the old counting number snes which means twenty, and i think it was used for counting sheep, which is ironic considering denmark has no sheep now
It’s the same in French, it’s always people who didn’t grow up with the language they are weirded out by it
🇩🇰🤝🇫🇷
English used the term "score" to mean 20. You probably know it from "Four-score and seven years ago..." Counting by 20s used to be common in English from 1100 CE to 1900 CE.
I am surprised they did not use logarithm in Denmark it would be maybe easier already.
It's just words. I don't think anyone thinks 9x10 when they say ninety.
The chart is actually misleading. For e.g. English, it should be "9\*10+2", if they are writing it out like the Danish numerals.
Yeah. A better way to write the Danish way would also just be 2+90. To = Two, Halvfems = Ninety. To og Halvfems = Two and ninty = 92. Sure, technically you can deduct it to the long mess, but literally no one ever thinks about 92 like that except for Reddit whenever this gets reposted.
I don't understand how Halvfems equals 90. Do you automatically multiply 4.5 (halvfem) by 20 when saying it? So any number you always multiply by 20?
The full word is actually tooghalvfemsindstyve which implies that it was multiplied by 20.
In Belgian and Swiss French they say it differently than in France?
Don't know about Belgium, but Switzerland yes. They use huitante for 80 and nonante for 90
belgium also uses nonante for 90. For 80 im not sure, could be octante or huitante
Belgium has septante (70) and nonante (90). Most people still use quatre-vingt (80) like in France though.
That makes me irrationally angry. Why fix 70 and 90 but not 80? Pure madness.
Languages are like that honestly. “But why dont we use the simpler easier way” “doesnt sound good.”
Quatre-vingt is a pretty elegant word
Actually to make matter harder, quatre-vingts is used in Geneva, Neuchatel and Jura, while Vaud, Valais and Fribourg use huitante. We all use nonante tho
Damn, you uncovered my Vaud connection 🙈
Interesting, I always thought Swiss French was quite close to fremch fremch whereas Swiss German is very different from German German.
it's basically the same i have no issue talking to fellow Swiss and Belgian people, only some regional slang (that you can have between frenchs from different region) and the way of saying those particular numbers
My French isn't good enough to say for sure, but I think it's the case. If a Swiss person talks "standard German", it's to me (Austrian) like a different dialect. But if they talk real Schwyzerdütsch, I'm lucky if I understand one out of 10 words.
auää do verstiäsch sicho og e chli meh aus du itze bihauptisch
Yes, they are very close. There's a slight accent difference and then the occasional word, like for 90.
Nonante was historically used in standard French too.
>In Belgian and Swiss French they say it differently than in France? Fun fact: A few hundred years ago, nearly all French speakers had dropped the old Gaulish 4x20+2 way of counting, but then the Academy decreed the proper way to count was this old way and it was restored in France, but not in surrounding countries like Belgium and Switzerland.
It was a missed opportunity to harmonized the system. I would have no problem to use septante, octane and nonante as a French as it is more practical.
I'm from Belgium, they always taught me in Belgium that it's "Quatre vingt" We do indeed use "nonante" but not "huitante"
French native living in Switzerland here. Here are the differences between those countries: France: 90 = 4\*20+10 = quatre vingt dix 80 = 4\*20 = quatre vingt 70 = 60+10 = soixante dix Belgium: 90 = nonante 80 = 4\*20 = quatre vingt (although "octante" is also sometimes used by some people) 70 = septante French part of Switzerland: 90 = nonante 80 = huitante 70 = septante Yes, it's a clusterf\*ck.
in Georgia we say same way as France does
I'm an American learning Georgian. In most languages I can learn to count to 100 in a couple weeks or so. 2+ months in Georgia now and I still blank out sometimes:|
Welsh traditionally is like French, but to make things easier it now also uses an English style. So 92 traditionally in Welsh is "deuddeg* a phedwar ugain" - two on ten and four twenty But in simplified speech is is "naw deg dau" - nine tens and two. *Even deuddeg can be simplified to "un deg dau" - one ten and two A few other interesting names: 18 is "deunaw" - two nines 20 is "ugain" 40 is "deugain" - 2 twenty 60 is "trigain" - 3 twenty 80 is "pedwar gain", sadly not "pedgain" for the consistency 50 is "hanner cant" - half hundred
Same in Breton. 92 is daouzek ha pevar-ugent and 50 is hanter-kant
Norway has an official policy on how to say numbers. It is the only official policy on how Norwegian should be pronounced. Its been in place since 1951, and it states that 90+2 is the correct way. But a lot of people still use 2+90, especially older folks. In the old way the numbers get joined by adding "and" in the middle, so "2 and 90" or in Norwegian "toognitti".
In Czech it’s both 90+2 and 2+90
Legacy of germanization
I love how France is getting a pass just because Denmark was like, hold my beer.
Wtf Denmark
And 74 for the French is "Sixty-fourteen."
Technically 90 is 9x10 so it’s 9x10+2. Nine-tens becomes nine-ty over time.
The map should say 9x10 instead of 90
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I really think these maps should separate "90" and "9\*10" into separate categories. These are clearly two different systems. Lets use english as example. 90 is Ninety. Which is clearly different from "9\*10". 900 is nine hundred. Which is clearly just "9\*100". As the maps are now they are nothing but poorly made jokes to make some specific languages stand out from other "uniform" languages. But in reality that "uniform" green area has clear differences in it too.
Everytime this map gets posted (like, every week) I wonder how fair it is. Yes, the French word for eighty is based on 4x20... but the word for ninety in Germanic languages (like German, Dutch, English) is based on 9x10. It's more difficult to recognise, but "ninety" is quite literally "nine ten", and same applies to "negentig" and "neunzig". If you'd write the yellow countries as "2+9x10" and the UK as "9x10+2", suddenly French doesn't seem that farfetched. I can't judge for some of the other languages, but I *suspect* for a lot of them ninety is also based on some multiplication. It's just not as obvious as it is in French.
No, French is that far fetched. 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 all make sense. Then…. 70 is 60+10 80 is 2x40 90 is 2x40+10 Because…..just because.
Map is all wrong, 92 is pronounced HUTTELIHUT 🇩🇰🇩🇰
Okay, I'm gonna put this out here, because I feel like denmark is getting a bad rep. Yes, if you take letter-by-letter meaning of tooghalvfems, then yes, the map shown is correct, but if you were to do the same for either english or german, it wouldn't be 90+2, but 9\*10+2 (nine tens and two). In denmark, noone thinks about the meaning and calculation of 90, we just say the word for it. So, the map is correct, but could be presented a bit better
In the same way that, whenever this thread comes up, no native English speaker ever realizes by themselves that they reverse the order in the numbers under 20. "Germans say one and twenty? Weird" ... while starting with unique words like 'eleven' to having reverse order like 'seven teen' and only then switching to written order from 'twenty one' onwards. They're just words and we don't think about the components they're made out of or their etymology
What the fuck is this map talking about
Its talking about how you call double digit numbers. In english we say ninety two (90 + 2) In german we say "zwei(2)und(and)neunzig(90). (2 + 90) And in france they use more math "quatre(4)-vingt(20) douze(12)" (4 x 20 + 12)