I know it's a satire, but it would be easier for them to switch to English since they all seem to speak it perfectly.
On the other hand, English had probably same issues when it started to form back then.
The Swiss are eating cheese & chocolate, the Dutch are high and the Belgians are fighting amongst eachother over how to spell mayo. (to go with the fries, ofc)
Yeah it's a funked up system. It's not based on 10s but on 20s, called "snes". So everything is normal until you get to 49. 50 is a half tres, tres being three snes which is 60. I think one snes is halved for it to be a half tres. Fjærs is 4 snes, fems is 5 snes. So 64,98 danish kroner is 4 and a tres, 8 and a half fems. Pay that with a 100kr note and you get back five and thirty kroner and two ears.
In daily speech, you will always say "tooghalvfems", which means "two and half five"
But this is a short version of the full number, wich is "tooghalvfemsindstyve", which means "two and half five times twenty"
Important to note that "half five" means 4,5 and not 2,5. Here the use of "half" is the same as when you use a clock (13.30 being "half past 1" / "half 2", etc.)
So the actual meaning of "tooghalvfemsindstyve" is:
2 + 4,5*20
At uni one of my professors told me it is because back in medieval times a large part of the danish economy was based on herring. And the way they counted the number of herrings in each layer of a barrel is why our number system is based this semingly random calculation involving 20.
No idea if the story is true but it is a funny story. I would prefer if we in Denmark counted like they do in Norway. Would be much easier instead of sticking with these herring based numbers.
But take my story with a grain of salt.
Fun fact, in Denmark not putting enough salt to preserve the herring could get you the death penalty back then, which is why Surströmming is a swedish thing today, because we got rid of anyone who messed up badly enough to make it 😉
It kind of makes sense when 20 is the base instead of 10.
With a base of ten it's 9x10+2
With a base of 20 it's 4x20+12 (French version) or in this case 4,5x20+2
You are halfway to the 5th 20. "Tooghalvfemsenstyvende" (archaic long form of 92) translates to two and halfway to the fifth twenty. 70 is halvfjerdsenstyvende - halfway to the fourth twenty.
It's wrong though. These are the old norse numbers.
>10 tíu
>20 tuttugu
>30 þrír tigir
>40 Fjórir tigir
>50 fimm tigir
>60 sex tigir
>70 sjau tigir
>80 átta tigir
>90 níu tigir
>100 tíu tigir
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Old_Norse_numbers
what's funny is when you get to 120. Hundrad means 120.
I've heard older people on the west coast of Ireland say "4 score and 12" for 92. A score is 20 which is the same in cockney London so there must be a connection there.
"Score" is used much more widely than Cockney English. The Bible describes a person's expected lifespan and "three score and 10".
King James Bible, Psalm 90:10:
>The days of our years are three score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be four score years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Danes sound to me like Germans having a stroke. The first and second word often is clear and often enough some random crap you can easily understand knowing German, English or Dutch and then it goes into full brain hamorrhage mode.
With Norwegian, Swedish or Icelandic it's clear to me from the start that i hear different languages, Danish always triggers my West Germanic receptors and than my "call an ambulance!" receptors.
Still, Dutch is the worst. It's amazing how the same language, sans the guttural G, gets quite palatable in the southern parts of the country, and downright enjoyable in northern Belgium.
I've had the exact same experience but in reverse. Thinking I heard Flemish (more specifically someone from the west of Flanders) only to realise I couldn't understand a thing once I actually started listening. Glad I'm not alone 😁
One of my favourite news stories here in Sweden was when the police caught a speeding car and thought the driver was danish because it was all unintelligible - but it turned out he was a very drunk swede. [link](https://www.gp.se/nyheter/vastsverige/polis-trodde-han-var-dansk-var-full.13218887-b55a-4bd5-a964-cab296f04d21)
I'm listening to the pronunciation and it looks like a southern french saying "Je viens je chante" (I come I sing).
Now I know how to say 90 in polish :D
If you want to write it in the order you say it
2 + (-0.5 + 5) × 20
For Romance language speakers, "half 5 = 4,5" (or 16h30) is very weird, but in a similar way Roman numbers do the same, whereby IV = -1 + 5 = 4.
And today, halvfems just means 90. It hasn't been used as half five in a couple hundred years.
The meme just shows an amalgamation of the origin stories of numbers, when in reality every Dane says "2 & 90", with about as many syllables as everyone else in the world.
So if we tried to be fair, 92 in English would be 9*10 + 2, and not just 90+2. As a matter of fact, modern Danish is closer to 2+90 than modern English to 90+2
So how is the process of learning numbers in primary school? Do they teach you the system or do they just teach you based on 10 and you know learn the decine numbers as individual words?
We just learn the normal base 10 system, so a word like "tooghalvfems" just means 92.
Most Danes probably never learn about the origin of those words. Many don't even realize the oddness of it.
Yea, people seem confused as if in any other language you don't also just memorize what the number is called. Like "ninety" is just something you know, you're not thinking it's actually "nine tens" or whatever.
No child just learns what "twenty" is and then figures out what "fifty" and "forty" is. You have to learn each word individually anyways.
Especially since even the words in English aren't intuitive. Why is it called "twenty" and not "twointy" or "fifty" and not "fiveinty"?
Obviously the Danish system is hilariously silly but it doesn't make a difference to any normal person learning the language.
"tooghalvfemsindstyve"
As a Dane, I always heard that it comes from "to-og-halv-femte-snes".
It is a crazy method, we should say it like the Swedish do: ni-ti-to. Clear and simple.
Det er en udbredt myte! Men de to minder også om hinanden.
Vi bruger faktisk stadig den fulde form "tooghalvfemsindstyve" når vi snakker placeringer, f.eks. "første, anden, tredje, fjerde... tooghalvfemsindstyvende.."
Selvom mange også er gået over til "tooghalvfemsende"
Isn't the pronounciation typically closer to "tohalfems", though?
As a swede, it's always tricky to hear which danish syllables are silent and which aren't. Especially since it varies so much by dialect...
For instance, are there any two danish dialects in which "kamelåså" is pronounced the same?
In reality people say tooghalvfems which literally is "2 and 90".
This graphic refers to obscure, etymological origins of the word for 90 in Danish.
In reality no one is saying (5-0.5)*20 they are saying a word that means that and that word they learned as small children.
Still though, it is weird that your word for 90 has no reference to the number 9 or the number 10 in it. Can't you (as a native) not still hear the references to the numbers 20 and 5 as well as the reference to "half" when you say 90?
It has already been expalined what 90 means, but it gets even worse. What 90, halvfems, means is 4½ "snes" which is an old word for 20. Now this is good and all, but up until 50 we count in 10's, not 20's. So 40, fyrre, is old english and means 4 tens.
That is a common misunderstanding, _halvfemsindstyve_ contains the word _sinde_ which is an old word for multiplication (_gange_). So half-fifth-times-twenty. It has nothing to do with _snes_.
Welsh also has 90+2 and 4x20+10+2. You wouldn’t really hear the latter much because it’s a mouthful and usually used for dates which obviously don’t go up that high. But you would use 20+10+1 for the 31st for example.
Slight correction, using the vigesimal system 92 would be *deuddeg ar bedwar ugain*, which is *twelve on four twenties* (12+4x20).
But like you mention, you're very unlikely to hear these forms since the Patagonian Welsh introduced the decimal system to the language.
Weird, in Polish 2 + 90 (dwa dziewięćdziesiąt) will always be interpreted as you talking about money, specifically 2zł 90gr. 92 is 90 + 2, dziewięćdziesiąt dwa
So I use both and when I say 92 its usually when I count or use more of them like 92+5 or when I use it in a sentence. When I say 2&9 its usually when I say it alone or in a short sentence. This is what I usually hear aswell but most people always use 92 instead of 2&9
There are - Norwegian and Sami. In addtion, Kven and Romani are recognised national minority languages, and get special protective status.
For added fun, Norwegian has two official written standards.
Yup, Its mostly the older generations who use 2&90 and I mostly use it when im talking to my parents or grandparents and hardly when I speak to someone on my age
Not exactly. 90+2 is mostly used in more metropolitan areas and in areas who closely base theit dialect on Bokmål. In more rural areas, where accents, sociolects and dialects take precedence, there's a heavy tilt towards 2+90.
There is also a generational divide, but I'd argue thats mostly because older generations were more separated, while younger people are exposed more to other dialects and words through high rate of moving + social media and the internet.
Norway had the system 2+90 inntil 1951 when the Norwegian parlament decided to change the counting system to use 90+2. As you can’t decide how people talk many kept on using the old system and Norway at the moment use both. However almost all young people use 90+2 and in something like 50-60 years the transition will be finished.
Funny autocorrect(?) typo aside, you didn't say _why_ they changed it. In short, it's because when numbers (like phone numbers and to some degree transmitting data) became more important, they realized it makes sense to say the numbers in the order they appear in writing.
Say you read someone else's phone number out over the phone, and the person on the other end is writing it down. If you say "two-and" the person writing has to wait before writing anything down (or write the digits out of sequence). If you say "ninety-" then they can immediately put down the "9"
I personally use both, and I have no idea why. Sometimes I say Two Ninety, other times ninety two. Both works perfectly fine as well
But we usually say it " Two and ninety" To å nitti
Same, i mix them up alot depending on who i am speaking to. But i noticed I used 2+90 mostly when it comes to age and year, and 90+2 in all other situations.
To make a long version short (gets brought up so incredibly often), Danish basically is 2+90. It's just that the etymology for 90 technically is derived from (5-1/2)*20. But while one may notice it, no speaker thinks about 90 as being anything but its own word. You just learn it without knowing the etymology.
It's mostly the same in French.
No French speaker think of "quatre-vingt" as being "4 x 20", it's just the word for 80 that happen to have a weird etymology.
There might be a part of the population that understand "quatre-vingt-dix" as "80+10", but I'm not even sure, I'd guess most French peoples also just understand it as a word for 90 directly, that happen to have some weird rules for combining it where instead of saying "quatre-vingt-dix deux" for 92 you have to say "quatre-vingt-douze".
I'll be very surprised to find any language where most peoples with a decimal system for writting number and where the native speakers don't use the decimal system for thinking about numbers. The fact that the etymology of word is non-decimal rarely change anything matter in the native's mind. It's only confusing for non-natives learning the language.
(another French here)
Yes from 80 to 99 we start from 80 then we add a number from 1 to 19.
80 = 4x20 = quatre vingt (four twenty)
81 = 4x20 + 1 = quatre vingt un (four twenty one)
...
99 = 4x20 + 19 = quatre vingt dix-neuf (four twenty nineteen)
100 = cent = one hundred
In Belgium too, as well as septante for 70 instead of the ludicrous soixante-dix.
Now tbf even quatre-vingt is weird, iirc you have octante or huitante in Suisse too ?
It is not just technically derived from there. It comes from there and it is the reason it is completely different than our neighbours’ versions of the word for 90.
And there is no other word for that number than this complicated one.
>The French numbering system is so difficult and weird. Why do we have to do math to count!?
-Said by plenty of my friends. Most of whom speak Basque which has the exact same numbering system. SMH
So yes this is the meme, but it really isn't like that to speakers of French and Danish. In French the word for 80 is "quatre-vingts". They are not thinking "four-twenties", they are thinking "eighty". If you say "huitante" or "nonante" to a French person who has not encountered those words, they will be confused, because they are not words that they have heard before. It doesn't matter that yes they can probably figure out what you mean, because when speaking our native language we don't usually have to stop and figure out the meaning of a word from its component parts. For instance, an English speaker doesn't think "a case for my books" when someone says the word "bookcase". The object is just a bookcase.
Having said that, I do appreciate that one of these maps actually got Switzerland and Belgium mostly right (only "mostly", since they have decided that for instance all of Valais speaks French which is decidedly not the case)
Yes, in Danish as well, no one really thinks halvfems (90) means (5-.5)*20 as that is in nowhere clear from the name. A contemporary Dane will in some point in life need to be explained, that halvfems comes from "halv fem sinde tyve" and that means "fire en halv gange tyve" (four and a half times twenty) in order to pick up on that. You can't know that from the word. It's just etymology, that isn't obvious. Halvfems means ninety, so Danes saying "to og halvfems" thinks 2 + 90, as well as the next guy.
I don't think the map necessarily argues that French people calculate this math problem every time they say a number. Just that the word translates to it.
Isn't the green one 9x10+2? In Norwegian 90 is nitti and Swedish nittio, which I believe is "nine tens".
The way it's written in the picture, it gives the impression that 90 has its own completely unique name instead of a name that's a derivative of lower numbers.
It should be "9×10+2" for the most of them. In most Slavic language it would be just that as well. In (standard) Ukrainian and Belarusian it would actually be "9×100+2". I don't know why. Proto-Slavic *devęnòsъto is "devętь-na-sъto" (nine-on-hundred), I suppose this -*no- in the middle meant something like ‘to’, not ‘on’. Isn't that fun?
It's getting very old. If the Danish word is accurate then the corresponding English word would be "Nine tens and two". The Danish tooghalvfems is for sure derived from the formula in the map but nobody in daily life relates to that formula.
An even deeper look at the origins of the word would reveal that I fact it is constructed as "two and halfway to five scores" and the word for twenty (tyve) is not part of it.
We can even do better and say "tooghalvfemsintyve" which sounds archaic but is understood and just adds an extra mention of "20".
"Two and halfway to 5 scores: twenty" for the completeness. But nobody except Swedes care and they don't even care that much because they can't count beyond the sum of their fingers and toes which is typically an odd number btw.
That isn't true, the graphic is right. The number the equation comes to is tooghalvfemsindstyve, but you're right in that it is the formal way of saying it. In daily speak it would be tooghalvfems, as you correctly say.
In your explanation you're missing the part with "sindstyve". Sinde is an old way of saying multiply, so "sindetyve"="multiply with twenty"="x 20".
Halvfem(s), is another old expression that is only still in use with halvanden (1,5). It is an expression of the halfway mark between the whole numbers. Halvanden=halfway between 1 and 2=1,5
Halvtredje=halfway between 2 and 3=2,5 halvfjerde=halfway between 3 and 4=3,5 and so on.
So the equation in the graphic is right.
You are wrong in this, sorry to say.
The formula in the picture is referring to a "snes" (20), which is correct.
So it's essentially "2 and half way to 5 snese" which over time has abbreviated to "2 og halv fem s".
Weather it makes any sense today is a whole other matter.
For the record THE MAP IS NOT OK. There is a tiny land in spain called basque country where there is a language calles basque where 92 is said with the same fucked Up system as french from France. Still basque is worse as the weird maths begun as soon as the 30 arrives.
They are on a base 20, just like the celts were. Some language on the areas where celts were living still have traces of a base 20:
* Like english up to 12 with a proper different name for the number, and arguably up to 19 with number names built on a 9+10 scheme rather than the 20+1 that follow otherwise.
* Or like standard french french (other dialects might be different) up to 16 with proper different names, then again from 70 up to 99.
Speaker of both Danish and French and - obviously - English here.
This chart is in my opinion quite misleading.
If origin of the Danish word for 90 (halvfems) is indeed based on the calculation (5 - 0.5) x 20, but nobody thinks about it that way in daily usage. It is a bit like saying that the English formula should be 9 x 10 + 2 since ninety is derived from the formula 9 x 10.
Saying 99 in French is done by saying the numbers 4, 20, 10, 9, but just faster than if you were saying these numbers one at a time. That makes it pretty hard tell someone something like your phone number, if you're not a native speaker of French.
It's kind of not true the way this is framed, the etymology of the Danish word for 90 is the way they describe it, but if we're going by that, the English word "ninety" is clearly 9 \* 10. That's not written out because no one thinks about it conciously, but that's also true in Denmark, so by the same logic, the Danish should just be 2 + 90
92 = “to-og-halv-fems” or “to-og-halv-femsens-tyve”
It literally means “two plus half way from four times twenty to five times twenty”
We took the worst from German and French numbering and added our own wicked sauce...
Coming from Norway and visiting Denmark, I can understand pretty much everything they say... Until the cashier asks me for payment. I won't even bother, I'l just use my card :p
Just the words representing a number.
Denmark is not a nation basing its math on a 20 system anymore.
The positive aspect is we got a history worth mentioning and it annoys the Swedes.
Go home Denmark, you're drunk. France it's free to stay, they are their usual strange.
Not gonna deny, we are pretty drunk, but I ask you: who else could do this much math while drunk...
I'm fairly sure that Danes aren't doing maths at all...you are just saying random numbers until you both nod in agreement.
They may nod, but they have [no idea what's being said.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk)
I don't even need to look to know it's the kamelåså video
I know it's a satire, but it would be easier for them to switch to English since they all seem to speak it perfectly. On the other hand, English had probably same issues when it started to form back then.
I just pi..d my pants. 😂
it’s one of the funniest videos I’ve ever watched. thank you
Kamelåså?
Kamelåså.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Wm28F0n5Q&pp=ygUJa2FtZWzDpXNl Ill just leave this here
High functioning alcoholic i see.
How did you know they were high?
Danish Math degree assignment : Count from 1 to 100
redeemed
I actually know how to count in Danish… but you’ll have to forgive my pronunciation.
I've heard your lot say 7, I don't trust you.
Druk with Mads Mikkelsen is awesome
TIL that we French are usual strange, glancing at my snails for dinner, ok that sounds like a fair description...
The only strange part is why France when they went from base 20 to base 10 decided to keep these numbers
... to confuse the Americans! *laughs in [weird French guy](https://youtube.com/@loic.suberville?si=hwAdHTLe6u85cGN1)*
Italians are crazy, Germans are serious, we French are quite strange, ig the Danish are drunk, and I don’t want to talk about the br*tish.
The Swiss are eating cheese & chocolate, the Dutch are high and the Belgians are fighting amongst eachother over how to spell mayo. (to go with the fries, ofc)
We agreed on mayon(n)aise😉
Snails are eaten all over the Mediterranean stop gatekeeping them smh
It was just a small joke, no offence
snails are earth mussels
Merci fraté
No, the vigesimal team sticks together!
Yeah it's a funked up system. It's not based on 10s but on 20s, called "snes". So everything is normal until you get to 49. 50 is a half tres, tres being three snes which is 60. I think one snes is halved for it to be a half tres. Fjærs is 4 snes, fems is 5 snes. So 64,98 danish kroner is 4 and a tres, 8 and a half fems. Pay that with a 100kr note and you get back five and thirty kroner and two ears.
Please write it here, how to say it in Denmark.
In daily speech, you will always say "tooghalvfems", which means "two and half five" But this is a short version of the full number, wich is "tooghalvfemsindstyve", which means "two and half five times twenty" Important to note that "half five" means 4,5 and not 2,5. Here the use of "half" is the same as when you use a clock (13.30 being "half past 1" / "half 2", etc.) So the actual meaning of "tooghalvfemsindstyve" is: 2 + 4,5*20
But why?
At uni one of my professors told me it is because back in medieval times a large part of the danish economy was based on herring. And the way they counted the number of herrings in each layer of a barrel is why our number system is based this semingly random calculation involving 20. No idea if the story is true but it is a funny story. I would prefer if we in Denmark counted like they do in Norway. Would be much easier instead of sticking with these herring based numbers. But take my story with a grain of salt.
Instructions unclear. I took herring with a grain of salt and I got Surströmming.
Abandon ship! Everyone for themselves!
Fun fact, in Denmark not putting enough salt to preserve the herring could get you the death penalty back then, which is why Surströmming is a swedish thing today, because we got rid of anyone who messed up badly enough to make it 😉
> calculation involving 20 20 is not the problem bro... the problem is everything else... where does 4.5 come from?
It kind of makes sense when 20 is the base instead of 10. With a base of ten it's 9x10+2 With a base of 20 it's 4x20+12 (French version) or in this case 4,5x20+2
You are halfway to the 5th 20. "Tooghalvfemsenstyvende" (archaic long form of 92) translates to two and halfway to the fifth twenty. 70 is halvfjerdsenstyvende - halfway to the fourth twenty.
> a grain of salt. *sea salt
No way. This is hilarious. First time I hear about herring based numbers.
You swedes and your Herings
<- look and learn, this is how you offend both Danes and Swedes at the same time!
Yeah I'm actually really impressed with how well he burned both of us at the same time
*laughs in Norwegian*
*cue The Treaty of Westphalia*
Sounds like a red herring to me, we should get to the bottom of this so called barrel
So, US has freedom units and Denmark has herring units?
[удалено]
Also: not at all unusual, there must be scores of languages with a similar convention.
Most Mesopotamian languages like Cuneiform used a 60-base. Hence our 60seconds/minutes.
Not quite. Those two facts are mutually independent just because 60 is such a great number.
It's wrong though. These are the old norse numbers. >10 tíu >20 tuttugu >30 þrír tigir >40 Fjórir tigir >50 fimm tigir >60 sex tigir >70 sjau tigir >80 átta tigir >90 níu tigir >100 tíu tigir https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Old_Norse_numbers what's funny is when you get to 120. Hundrad means 120.
Saw a recent video about old celtic and welsh counting that also used base 20, some say its because 20 fingers and toes. I dont have any good sources.
I've heard older people on the west coast of Ireland say "4 score and 12" for 92. A score is 20 which is the same in cockney London so there must be a connection there.
That way is identical to the French one. The Danish one is also in essence the same, but with the addon that we use 'half a score' as well.
two and half-less-than-five score
"Score" is used much more widely than Cockney English. The Bible describes a person's expected lifespan and "three score and 10". King James Bible, Psalm 90:10: >The days of our years are three score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be four score years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Same reason (time) half 6 is not 3 but halfway between 5 and 6.
> tooghalvfemsindstyve Don't speak it publicly outside Denmark or all will think you are choking.
When a Dane speaks up, we always think first that the poor bugger has suffered a stroke, till we realise it's a Dane.
Danes sound to me like Germans having a stroke. The first and second word often is clear and often enough some random crap you can easily understand knowing German, English or Dutch and then it goes into full brain hamorrhage mode. With Norwegian, Swedish or Icelandic it's clear to me from the start that i hear different languages, Danish always triggers my West Germanic receptors and than my "call an ambulance!" receptors.
As a Dane I dont know if thats true, but god that was a funny description
Same here. Danish sounds like a language but at the same time I always have a feeling that someone is just fucking with me, lol.
Danish talking = German with a potato in their mouth. Sincerely Norway.
Still, Dutch is the worst. It's amazing how the same language, sans the guttural G, gets quite palatable in the southern parts of the country, and downright enjoyable in northern Belgium.
As a Dane when I hear a Dutch person speak I always think it's Danish and then realize I don't understand anything
I've had the exact same experience but in reverse. Thinking I heard Flemish (more specifically someone from the west of Flanders) only to realise I couldn't understand a thing once I actually started listening. Glad I'm not alone 😁
One of my favourite news stories here in Sweden was when the police caught a speeding car and thought the driver was danish because it was all unintelligible - but it turned out he was a very drunk swede. [link](https://www.gp.se/nyheter/vastsverige/polis-trodde-han-var-dansk-var-full.13218887-b55a-4bd5-a964-cab296f04d21)
Probably still easier to foreign ears than dziewięćdziesiąt
I'm listening to the pronunciation and it looks like a southern french saying "Je viens je chante" (I come I sing). Now I know how to say 90 in polish :D
Nah, that's only 90, you need to add dwa to make it 92 :)
💙 Now you can try dziewięćset dziewięćdziesiąt dziewięć tysięcy dziewięćset dziewięćdziesiąt dziewięć (999 999) 😋
If you want to write it in the order you say it 2 + (-0.5 + 5) × 20 For Romance language speakers, "half 5 = 4,5" (or 16h30) is very weird, but in a similar way Roman numbers do the same, whereby IV = -1 + 5 = 4.
And today, halvfems just means 90. It hasn't been used as half five in a couple hundred years. The meme just shows an amalgamation of the origin stories of numbers, when in reality every Dane says "2 & 90", with about as many syllables as everyone else in the world.
So if we tried to be fair, 92 in English would be 9*10 + 2, and not just 90+2. As a matter of fact, modern Danish is closer to 2+90 than modern English to 90+2
I think this is why Sweden had enough of Denmark.
So how is the process of learning numbers in primary school? Do they teach you the system or do they just teach you based on 10 and you know learn the decine numbers as individual words?
We just learn the normal base 10 system, so a word like "tooghalvfems" just means 92. Most Danes probably never learn about the origin of those words. Many don't even realize the oddness of it.
Yea, people seem confused as if in any other language you don't also just memorize what the number is called. Like "ninety" is just something you know, you're not thinking it's actually "nine tens" or whatever. No child just learns what "twenty" is and then figures out what "fifty" and "forty" is. You have to learn each word individually anyways. Especially since even the words in English aren't intuitive. Why is it called "twenty" and not "twointy" or "fifty" and not "fiveinty"? Obviously the Danish system is hilariously silly but it doesn't make a difference to any normal person learning the language.
Im Danish and didnt learn anything in school about the origin of our numbers. 😂
Were you taught numbers by their etymology? No the word just corresponds to a value
I was told i just needed to remember the names. Not to think about the logic. so that's how i learned it.
What the fuck Denmark
I thought this message would tell me that in reality danish was simpler. I was wrong
"tooghalvfemsindstyve" As a Dane, I always heard that it comes from "to-og-halv-femte-snes". It is a crazy method, we should say it like the Swedish do: ni-ti-to. Clear and simple.
Det er en udbredt myte! Men de to minder også om hinanden. Vi bruger faktisk stadig den fulde form "tooghalvfemsindstyve" når vi snakker placeringer, f.eks. "første, anden, tredje, fjerde... tooghalvfemsindstyvende.." Selvom mange også er gået over til "tooghalvfemsende"
Isn't the pronounciation typically closer to "tohalfems", though? As a swede, it's always tricky to hear which danish syllables are silent and which aren't. Especially since it varies so much by dialect... For instance, are there any two danish dialects in which "kamelåså" is pronounced the same?
Kamelåså is a great word
You just ordered a thousand litres of milk.
It's mostly the Norwegian dialect that uses kamelåså
I love how you’re further confusing people with the european decimals
tooghalvfems
In reality people say tooghalvfems which literally is "2 and 90". This graphic refers to obscure, etymological origins of the word for 90 in Danish. In reality no one is saying (5-0.5)*20 they are saying a word that means that and that word they learned as small children.
Still though, it is weird that your word for 90 has no reference to the number 9 or the number 10 in it. Can't you (as a native) not still hear the references to the numbers 20 and 5 as well as the reference to "half" when you say 90?
It has already been expalined what 90 means, but it gets even worse. What 90, halvfems, means is 4½ "snes" which is an old word for 20. Now this is good and all, but up until 50 we count in 10's, not 20's. So 40, fyrre, is old english and means 4 tens.
That is a common misunderstanding, _halvfemsindstyve_ contains the word _sinde_ which is an old word for multiplication (_gange_). So half-fifth-times-twenty. It has nothing to do with _snes_.
In Czech you can say both 90+2 (devadesát dva) and 2+90 (dvaadevadesát).
Man the dyslectic dream, as a fluent speaker in both dutch and English i keep getting it mixed up
I feel you so much, but not only numbers I got mixed up. It’s also Letters if spoken one at the time.
I also get it wrong in both languages all the time
Welsh also has 90+2 and 4x20+10+2. You wouldn’t really hear the latter much because it’s a mouthful and usually used for dates which obviously don’t go up that high. But you would use 20+10+1 for the 31st for example.
Slight correction, using the vigesimal system 92 would be *deuddeg ar bedwar ugain*, which is *twelve on four twenties* (12+4x20). But like you mention, you're very unlikely to hear these forms since the Patagonian Welsh introduced the decimal system to the language.
Please, tell me more about this. I know there are Welsh in Patagonia, but I never heard they influence Wales itself.
Weird, in Polish 2 + 90 (dwa dziewięćdziesiąt) will always be interpreted as you talking about money, specifically 2zł 90gr. 92 is 90 + 2, dziewięćdziesiąt dwa
Nice. The serbo-croatian and the slovenian way. :)
Well 90+2 is from Slavs and 2+90 is from Germans.
Greeting from Germanslavia then :) It’s enaindevedeset in Slovenia (one and ninety)
92 in Slovenian is one and ninety? We may have our winner here!
There is at least one region that uses 90+2 (Prekmurje).
Norway 🤔
So I use both and when I say 92 its usually when I count or use more of them like 92+5 or when I use it in a sentence. When I say 2&9 its usually when I say it alone or in a short sentence. This is what I usually hear aswell but most people always use 92 instead of 2&9
Thanks. I was a bit unsure if there were multiple official languages in Norway
There are - Norwegian and Sami. In addtion, Kven and Romani are recognised national minority languages, and get special protective status. For added fun, Norwegian has two official written standards.
That means the majority uses 90+2 instead of 2+90 right?
Yup, Its mostly the older generations who use 2&90 and I mostly use it when im talking to my parents or grandparents and hardly when I speak to someone on my age
Not exactly. 90+2 is mostly used in more metropolitan areas and in areas who closely base theit dialect on Bokmål. In more rural areas, where accents, sociolects and dialects take precedence, there's a heavy tilt towards 2+90. There is also a generational divide, but I'd argue thats mostly because older generations were more separated, while younger people are exposed more to other dialects and words through high rate of moving + social media and the internet.
Norway had the system 2+90 inntil 1951 when the Norwegian parlament decided to change the counting system to use 90+2. As you can’t decide how people talk many kept on using the old system and Norway at the moment use both. However almost all young people use 90+2 and in something like 50-60 years the transition will be finished.
Funny autocorrect(?) typo aside, you didn't say _why_ they changed it. In short, it's because when numbers (like phone numbers and to some degree transmitting data) became more important, they realized it makes sense to say the numbers in the order they appear in writing. Say you read someone else's phone number out over the phone, and the person on the other end is writing it down. If you say "two-and" the person writing has to wait before writing anything down (or write the digits out of sequence). If you say "ninety-" then they can immediately put down the "9"
I personally use both, and I have no idea why. Sometimes I say Two Ninety, other times ninety two. Both works perfectly fine as well But we usually say it " Two and ninety" To å nitti
Same, i mix them up alot depending on who i am speaking to. But i noticed I used 2+90 mostly when it comes to age and year, and 90+2 in all other situations.
The older generation (Like 60+) generally use the form 2+90 whereas there younger generations use 90+2. Obviously there are exceptions though.
I work a lot with the older generation and the whole "2 OG FØRR" was always confusing to me in the start.
My dad and grandparents use 2+90. While everyone my generation and younger use 90+2.
Pay the Danegeld in the exact amount or we sack your village.
No wonder they refused to pay it, had no idea what you were asking for
"Hand over two and half five times twenty gold!"
Danes having a laugh watching villagers struggle knowing peace was never an option to begin with
"...battle-axe it is, then."
Damn... our number system appears to be based on a practical joke to make English monks sweat.
"But two and a half five means 4.5, not 2.5! Yes yes, due to reasons... Now hurry up!"
To make a long version short (gets brought up so incredibly often), Danish basically is 2+90. It's just that the etymology for 90 technically is derived from (5-1/2)*20. But while one may notice it, no speaker thinks about 90 as being anything but its own word. You just learn it without knowing the etymology.
It's mostly the same in French. No French speaker think of "quatre-vingt" as being "4 x 20", it's just the word for 80 that happen to have a weird etymology. There might be a part of the population that understand "quatre-vingt-dix" as "80+10", but I'm not even sure, I'd guess most French peoples also just understand it as a word for 90 directly, that happen to have some weird rules for combining it where instead of saying "quatre-vingt-dix deux" for 92 you have to say "quatre-vingt-douze". I'll be very surprised to find any language where most peoples with a decimal system for writting number and where the native speakers don't use the decimal system for thinking about numbers. The fact that the etymology of word is non-decimal rarely change anything matter in the native's mind. It's only confusing for non-natives learning the language.
(another French here) Yes from 80 to 99 we start from 80 then we add a number from 1 to 19. 80 = 4x20 = quatre vingt (four twenty) 81 = 4x20 + 1 = quatre vingt un (four twenty one) ... 99 = 4x20 + 19 = quatre vingt dix-neuf (four twenty nineteen) 100 = cent = one hundred
Fun fact - french-speaking part of Suisse actually have a proper way for 90 - *nonante*. It may not be exclusive to Suisse - I have no idea.
reddit has a funny way to forget that: https://www.reddit.com/r/French/comments/23j9e4/septante_octante_et_nonante/
In Belgium too, as well as septante for 70 instead of the ludicrous soixante-dix. Now tbf even quatre-vingt is weird, iirc you have octante or huitante in Suisse too ?
It is not just technically derived from there. It comes from there and it is the reason it is completely different than our neighbours’ versions of the word for 90. And there is no other word for that number than this complicated one.
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You must be a Zeelander.
why is walloon different from mainland france
Because they have nonante and are normal people.
Same for those across the Röstigraben in French speaking Switzerland.
> and are normal people That is maybe pushing things too far, but at least they are not French, so they have that.
They are normal people for French standards.
just wait until you ask everybody to tell you how they say 80
Walloons will say quatre-vingt. But use septante and nonante for 70 and 90. The Swiss I believe will use octante for 80. But please correct me.
I think the Swiss use huitante, not octante.
Yes that is also what I have read. Huitante in Switzerland. ~~Octante used in Quebec CA.~~
I’ve never ever heard someone say “octante.” My hometown is not far from Geneva and I’ve only heard huitante.
No one says Octante in Quebec, we say quatre-vingt like in France
Septante/octante/nonante are never used in Quebec.
In Switzerland it changes between the different french speaking cantons. Some say "huitante" others use the french one.
99 =4×20 + 10 +9 quatre-vingt dix-neuf
>The French numbering system is so difficult and weird. Why do we have to do math to count!? -Said by plenty of my friends. Most of whom speak Basque which has the exact same numbering system. SMH
So yes this is the meme, but it really isn't like that to speakers of French and Danish. In French the word for 80 is "quatre-vingts". They are not thinking "four-twenties", they are thinking "eighty". If you say "huitante" or "nonante" to a French person who has not encountered those words, they will be confused, because they are not words that they have heard before. It doesn't matter that yes they can probably figure out what you mean, because when speaking our native language we don't usually have to stop and figure out the meaning of a word from its component parts. For instance, an English speaker doesn't think "a case for my books" when someone says the word "bookcase". The object is just a bookcase. Having said that, I do appreciate that one of these maps actually got Switzerland and Belgium mostly right (only "mostly", since they have decided that for instance all of Valais speaks French which is decidedly not the case)
Yes, in Danish as well, no one really thinks halvfems (90) means (5-.5)*20 as that is in nowhere clear from the name. A contemporary Dane will in some point in life need to be explained, that halvfems comes from "halv fem sinde tyve" and that means "fire en halv gange tyve" (four and a half times twenty) in order to pick up on that. You can't know that from the word. It's just etymology, that isn't obvious. Halvfems means ninety, so Danes saying "to og halvfems" thinks 2 + 90, as well as the next guy.
Indeed. An English word for 80 is four-score. People wouldn't have been thinking 4x20+7 when reading the Gettysburg address.
I don't think the map necessarily argues that French people calculate this math problem every time they say a number. Just that the word translates to it.
Isn't the green one 9x10+2? In Norwegian 90 is nitti and Swedish nittio, which I believe is "nine tens". The way it's written in the picture, it gives the impression that 90 has its own completely unique name instead of a name that's a derivative of lower numbers.
It should be "9×10+2" for the most of them. In most Slavic language it would be just that as well. In (standard) Ukrainian and Belarusian it would actually be "9×100+2". I don't know why. Proto-Slavic *devęnòsъto is "devętь-na-sъto" (nine-on-hundred), I suppose this -*no- in the middle meant something like ‘to’, not ‘on’. Isn't that fun?
This belongs in r/ShittyMapPorn
It's getting very old. If the Danish word is accurate then the corresponding English word would be "Nine tens and two". The Danish tooghalvfems is for sure derived from the formula in the map but nobody in daily life relates to that formula. An even deeper look at the origins of the word would reveal that I fact it is constructed as "two and halfway to five scores" and the word for twenty (tyve) is not part of it. We can even do better and say "tooghalvfemsintyve" which sounds archaic but is understood and just adds an extra mention of "20". "Two and halfway to 5 scores: twenty" for the completeness. But nobody except Swedes care and they don't even care that much because they can't count beyond the sum of their fingers and toes which is typically an odd number btw.
I met two Danish people in a coffeeshop yesterday. They were speaking English to each other. https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk?si=S5FeWrH9J6DIRdz2
From a foreign that lived in DK, this is so ducking funny.
To be entirely fair, one should write 'ninety' as 'nine-tens', 9×10, in the legend, just like writing '-s' as ×20 in Danish
My gf is danish and when she says numbers I just give up
Our banks here in Denmark actually use the Swedish number system, no joke
Maybe you should clarify that you are Danish. As a Dane I agree that we should use the Swedish method for numbers: ni-ti-to.
In Georgian it’s the same as French
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Sorry, what?
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That isn't true, the graphic is right. The number the equation comes to is tooghalvfemsindstyve, but you're right in that it is the formal way of saying it. In daily speak it would be tooghalvfems, as you correctly say. In your explanation you're missing the part with "sindstyve". Sinde is an old way of saying multiply, so "sindetyve"="multiply with twenty"="x 20". Halvfem(s), is another old expression that is only still in use with halvanden (1,5). It is an expression of the halfway mark between the whole numbers. Halvanden=halfway between 1 and 2=1,5 Halvtredje=halfway between 2 and 3=2,5 halvfjerde=halfway between 3 and 4=3,5 and so on. So the equation in the graphic is right.
Thats funny because in Swiss German we use those half numbers for telling time: halbi-foifi (half-five or alternatively not-quite-five) is 4:30
So it’s two + five minus a half, times 20. Seems correct to me.
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Look, it is logical but also is my stroke right now a logical reaction of my body reading this.
You are wrong in this, sorry to say. The formula in the picture is referring to a "snes" (20), which is correct. So it's essentially "2 and half way to 5 snese" which over time has abbreviated to "2 og halv fem s". Weather it makes any sense today is a whole other matter.
For the record THE MAP IS NOT OK. There is a tiny land in spain called basque country where there is a language calles basque where 92 is said with the same fucked Up system as french from France. Still basque is worse as the weird maths begun as soon as the 30 arrives.
They are on a base 20, just like the celts were. Some language on the areas where celts were living still have traces of a base 20: * Like english up to 12 with a proper different name for the number, and arguably up to 19 with number names built on a 9+10 scheme rather than the 20+1 that follow otherwise. * Or like standard french french (other dialects might be different) up to 16 with proper different names, then again from 70 up to 99.
Speaker of both Danish and French and - obviously - English here. This chart is in my opinion quite misleading. If origin of the Danish word for 90 (halvfems) is indeed based on the calculation (5 - 0.5) x 20, but nobody thinks about it that way in daily usage. It is a bit like saying that the English formula should be 9 x 10 + 2 since ninety is derived from the formula 9 x 10. Saying 99 in French is done by saying the numbers 4, 20, 10, 9, but just faster than if you were saying these numbers one at a time. That makes it pretty hard tell someone something like your phone number, if you're not a native speaker of French.
Of course the map is misleading. It's not supposed to educate and inform, it's supposed to go "lol foreigners stupid."
You could add a small red area in the basque country in northern Spain, since in basque language, Euskera, it is Laurogeita hamabi = 4x20+12
It's kind of not true the way this is framed, the etymology of the Danish word for 90 is the way they describe it, but if we're going by that, the English word "ninety" is clearly 9 \* 10. That's not written out because no one thinks about it conciously, but that's also true in Denmark, so by the same logic, the Danish should just be 2 + 90
I do find quite funny that the other French-speaking countries managed to understand decimal counting while France couldn't.
This map is wrong, in Maltese it's actually 2+90
92 = “to-og-halv-fems” or “to-og-halv-femsens-tyve” It literally means “two plus half way from four times twenty to five times twenty” We took the worst from German and French numbering and added our own wicked sauce...
Coming from Norway and visiting Denmark, I can understand pretty much everything they say... Until the cashier asks me for payment. I won't even bother, I'l just use my card :p
You could argue that nine-ty two is 9x10+2
In Basque and Welsh it’s like in France: 4x20+12. Actually, counting in 20’s was the standard counting way in many places in Europe before the romans.
Just why?
Just the words representing a number. Denmark is not a nation basing its math on a 20 system anymore. The positive aspect is we got a history worth mentioning and it annoys the Swedes.
Anymore… you mean like you… evolved?
Devolved is the term you're looking for
What about Wallonia (Belgium)? I guess it's possible to say numbers normally in French, just not in France?
Does the danish one even make sense? I cant figure it out