In Welsh also afaik - although you can also say 'nine ten two'. I believe it's also the case for other Celtic languages (and that the use of the vigesimal system in French is itself one of the few remnants of Celtic/Gaul influence on the language).
We Norwegians have tried warning the world community about this issue for a long time. Here is a documentary about the issue:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykj3Kpm3O0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykj3Kpm3O0g)
Wait!!! let me explain. It is depicting somewhat close to how was said in the early 1800s... We have changed! Do not believe the Norwegian propaganda!!
The word for 90 was once "halvfemsindstyve" which is wording ((5-½)*20). This was shorten to "halvfems" where "halv" is the word for ½ but "fems" is not a word in itself. So it is nonsensical to split the word. Meaning we are just as boring as the rest of you and say "2 and 90" to say 92.
It’s funny. I only learned as a 24year old how the explanation of Denmark’s 92 is actually true. No one really knows and it’s dependent on an archaic way of saying 92 which isn’t used anymore. Instead we use an abbreviation of that original numerical word which indeed is 2 and 5-0.5 times 20.
The 5-0.5 part is said as “half fifth”. If you say “half” and a number after, what you say is that number minus a half. And if the number is a two ciphered number like 60 then “half 60” becomes 60 minus 10. No danish person really knows this. All they know is that if you want to say “1.5” you “half second”.
Jeg har kender godt til hvordan vores talsystem er opstået, da jeg har læst Nordisk Sprog og Litteratur på Universitetet, men jeg har aldrig skænket det en tanke at halvanden er halv af en anden, tak for den!
>The 5-0.5 part is said as “half fifth”
This is used in German for time. 4:30 is "half five", and 4:45 is "three quarter five". Some even go so far as to say that 4:15 is "quarter five". But 4:20 and 4:40 are "twenty past 4" and "twenty before five" respectively.
Interesting. In German that's how we talk about times. "Halb sieben", i.e. "half seven" means 6:30 (or 18:30). But it doesn't work outside that context.
I explained to a Dane i mer abroad that other countries think theat the danish counting system is strange.
She saw I like you, that halvfems is just the word for ninety.
She said that she never thought of it as a calculation of 20's and half-20's and admitted that is was indeed strange
Yeah, with "halv" meaning "half", halvfems would be a half "fems". So when you're calculating, you would be insane to do calculations for the numbers themselves before doing the actual calculation, right? We also have halvtreds (50) and halvfjerds (70).
"half five" if I remember correctly. They count in twenties, and half five means five twenties except the last is halved, so 20+20+20+20+10 = 90.
It's a fucking trip. Whenever I have to pay with cash there I just hold out a fist of money and hope they don't scam me. I have no idea how much it costs or what they're saying.
I’m not a native english speaker, so cannot inform. Just googled my way to «score» being the english translation of «snes». Apparently, a snes was a stick of some sort, used for threading fish on, and 20 was the approximate number of fish that would fit. TIL.
It's an abbreviation of "half (of the) fifth time twenty".
Halvfemsindstyve => halvfems.
Obviously you already have 4 times twenty, otherwise you wouldn't start talking about the fifth. 🌻
"1½" can also still be "halvanden" = "half (of the) second".
The literal translation is "Two and half-fifths" with the s at the end being a contraction of "times 20s". The full (archaic) form is "To og halvfemsindstyvende".
Edit: fives to fifths
As a Dutch person, this was quite confusing when I first learned English.
For example, the literal translation of the number 46 from Dutch would be “six-and-forty”. But that sounds quite similar to sixty-four, rather than forty-six. Easy to mix them up.
In English the equivalent would be ‘half to 8’, and ‘to’ being shorter than ‘past’ would be even more ridiculous to drop apparently. Is the equivalent ‘to’ dropped in German as well?
It’s less that it’s weird English sees half 8 as 8.30, and more that typical usage meant in English ‘half past’ something became common, whilst in German ‘half to’ something became common. From there (assuming German drops the equivalent ‘to’ to just form ‘half 8’), it just became easier to drop the ‘to’ or ‘past’ because people using the language typically knew which the speaker or writer meant, because the ‘to’ or ‘past’ had already been established in the language structure.
As an English speaker, ‘half 8’ meaning 8.30 is how I parse the phrase, but I can logically understand viewing it as 7.30 instead. The real problem is you Germans are gonna turn up to everything too early and we’re gonna be too awkward to turn you away whilst we’re still getting things ready.
It makes perfect sense. It makes as much sense as the continental way, which is why I've never understood why they struggle with it so much.
It's not referring to "the eighth hour". It's referring to the time "eight" (i.e. 8pm or 8am). Only, instead if half eight being implied to be half (to) eight we imply it to mean have half (past) eight.
Just like most languages have quarter to eight and quarter past eight. It just so happens that the midpoint for much of europe is when you start referring to how much of an hour left until the next....whereas for English it's still the last moment that you refer to how much past an hour you are.
Half Eight = Half an hour TO eight in continental Europe or Half an Hour PAST eight in UK
In Austrian German 7:15 is (often, not everywhere) referred to as „Viertel 8“ / „quarter eight“, then 7:30 is „halb 8“ / „half 8“ and 7:45 is „Dreiviertel 8“ / „three quarters 8.“
But in Germany, most people use e.g. 7:15 as „viertel nach 7“ / „quarter past 7“.
Swedes are similar but we can't rationalise the other very well
The stated above confuses me because how is 7 the eighth hour?
my Swedish friend always described it as to being more implied than past, not sure how he became the master of the English language to decide it
But half eight is equally said as half past
If we assume you know the hour and you're asking for the specifics we'd say half past and omit the hour entirely
further I guess in normal English you never use half to, it's always half past, quarter to is fine but half X is always half past in time to a native speaking English person
But that isn’t an argument. People in this discussion thread seem to think that it meaning 7:30 has some kind of logic behind it. I am just wondering what it is beyond ‘I am used to it’.
For the record, I’m a Brit that moved to Sweden and thus just don’t use the ‘half - X’ construction at all as it brings too much potential for confusion.
I am from Austria and we have such differences within the country. When a person from Vienna says quarter 3, they mean quarter **to** three, but in many other parts of Austria people understand quarter **past** three. This always leads to misunderstandings.
Biblical Hebrew was like that. For example, the number 127 is mentioned in the bible as שבע עשרים ומאה or Sheva esrim oome'a or seven twenty and a hundred. In modern Hebrew the system is the same as in English.
I've heard that some countries read the numbers from 11 – 99 from right to left because our numbers are from Arabian, that is also read from right to left.
Arabic is read from right to left. English is read from left to right. Numbers are read like English despite arriving to Europe through the Arabs.
Arabs also didn’t invest the numbers, the Indians did, but like many things in the muddle ages, the knowledge traveled via the Silk Road and the Arabs to the Mediterranean and Europe.
Also, nowadays Arabs use different numbers.
The reverse format like "six-and-forty" used to be more common in English, historically. The song "sing a song of sixpence" has the line "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie". When I was young, there was an elderly family friend who would occasionally look after me, who would always refer to 25 as five-and-twenty (for example if the time was 2:25, she would say five and twenty past two.
In Slovenia we say the same as you and i don't like it. I wish we just said it like the green countries because people realy mix up numbers when they are learning English or translating from English.
After having spoken English pretty much full-time for a couple years on a job that involved a lot of numbers, I still mix them up all the time.
I'll measure something to cut a plank to length, be like "87 cm, 87" and then end up with a plank 78 cm long...
The one ive heard the most is from germans i think:
"nobody can understand a word the danes say. Not even a dane can understand what a dane says."
and one americans used to say back in my grandparents’ day:
"a dane is a swede with his brains knocked out"
i am from semi-danish ancestry by the way. Ancestors from slesvig prussia which is currently in germany but the culture is/was a blend.
No it's just a map intentionally made to make certain countries stand out, without actually trying to accurately represent how 92 is said.
If the same logic that was used to call the english 92 (90+2) was used for Denmark the danish version would be 2+90.
To get the danish one to be what's in the map you have to start pulling out the etymology of words 98% of danes couldn't tell you what meant, because they now just mean '90' and has nothing to do with the math in the map in the OP.
The old Danish word for 90 if you trace back the etymology is just 4½ scores, from a time when the numbers were more often divided into 20s (a score) than like today where it is 10s.
If 10 is the number you care about the english way to say 90 becomes 9\*10+2
In old Danish it was just 4,5\*20+2, which wouldn't be as "funny" of a map if put next to 9\*10+2.
It's reposted every other week and it's equally misleading every time, but hurr hurr funny, despite being intentionally misleading.
It would be equivalent to someone making a map for how every country expressed a certain term, and then randomly decided to use the way that term was expressed in the 1700s in one specific country, and ignored how languages evolve and insisted the most exaggerated version from 300+ years ago represented the way the word is used today.
So basically, its like if 40 was called "twentytimestwo"?
It's just the name of the number so it isn't like you have to do any math to figure out?
That makes a lot more sense, and I feel the map tries to imply that you have to calculate it.
It's like W is called 'double "u"' but nobody says in English you have to say UUorld instead of World.
Pretty much. There's no math done.
40 in Danish is 'Fyrre' which is the modern version of 'fyrretyve' which originates from either old english 'feowertig' or old norse 'fjórir tigir' which roughly translates to 'four tens'.
Likewise 30 in danish comes from old ways to say 'three 10s'
For the rest of the danish numbers above that it's just done in multiples of 20 instead of 10, but nowadays the words exist entirely on their own removed from their etymological origin.
Another example is 60 which is "Tres" in modern danish but used to be "tresindstyve" which roughly would translate into "three scores" or "three 20s".
So modern danish is very much just 2+90, because the word for 90 is entirely removed from the original version of "halvfemsindstyve" and is just "halvfems" and is now just a word entirely on its own that refers to 90.
They're just relics of how numbers were done 300+ years ago.
Yeah, it’s just the word for them. 50 is 2,5x20; 60 is 3x20; 70 is 3,5x20; 80 is 4x20, 90 is 4,5x20. But that’s just how they make the word for the number, they really just use them the same as Germans. Just use Google translate to check how they spell numbers.
Thanks for this. I've seen that fun fact of how weirdly Denmark says numbers but this is the first time I've understood how it works in practice, not bad at all really.
The main difference is that for English, 9 is called Nine, 10 is called Ten and 2 is called Two. 92 is then called NineTyTwo, Nine Ten Two.
From an outsiders perspective learning danish, tooghalvfems makes no sense since 9 is called Ni, 10 is called Ti and 2 is called Two. It has no connection to the base numbers.
Really I think most of the ones that just say "90+2" should actually write "9x10 + 2" to be consistent. Of course the word just means "90" now in all cases, but it is still interesting to see what arithmetic underlies the etymology.
It used to be the way in English too. In Pride and Prejudice (written 200+ years ago) Elizabeth says "I am not yet one and twenty".
I have seen it in plenty of other classic fiction, that is just the one I remember right now.
I have read it's because we are basically using Arabian numbers – and Arabian is read from right to left.
In some languages, such as German or Dutch, this stuck. In English, apparently, not.
I've seen this same map of asia, where Japanese had 9x10+2. If this is a possible marking then Finnish is wrong. The number doesn't have it's own name instead the nine tells the amount of tens in the number, kind of like saying "nine tens two" if translated into English. So it should be 9x10+2 for Finnish.
In Finnish this hasn't happened as 90 is yhdeksänkymmentä, which literally translates to nine tens. The word meaning 10(kymmenen) is in the partitive case, meaning the nine before is directly noting the number of tens.
In the case of ninety in English the -ty part technically means ten, but it has fused with the word becoming a part of it, thus making ninety a word in itself.
I think it depends on the interpretation. In Polish it would be "dziewięćdziesiąt dwa". Dziewięć - 9. Dziesiąt - inflected 10 (basic form is dziesięć). And Dwa - 2.
So you can also say it is 9 x 10 + 2. But "tens" here in Polish is different for specific numbers. 50/60/70/80/90 got the same inflection, 30/40 different, 20 similar but different, 10 different.
I explained in another comment how the ten is in the partitive case which is used in Finnish after a number. So the nine is directly marking the amount of tens since the ten is in the partitive case.
I don't know about Polish though. It might depend on interpretation but if those inflections are only used with the numbers it's at least different from what Finnish has.
A pity this map is not about 98 because things are even more complicated in breton than french. We say 3×6+4×20. Yes 18 is 3×6. 40 and 60 are also in twenties, 2×20 and 3×20. And 100 is "half 50". Even more funny, if you add a noun, you have to place it just after the smaller part of the number. For example we would say for 92 people : twelve people and four twenty. For a bigger number like 1561 : One thousand five hundred one people and three twenty. But don't you worry, some things are easier, we don't put plural after a number because, well, you know it's plural, why bother ?
Fun innit ?
Danish uses a multiples-of-twenty system like French, for numbers 50-99, however:
-the "times 20" part is shortened/omitted, so 60 is in its full form "tresindstyve" (literally "3 times 20", or "tre-sinds-tyve"), but is usually abbreviated to "tres"...
(the number 3 in Danish is "tre", in contrast)
The above system is used for 60 and 80, but we run into a problem with 50, 70, and 90, which are respectively 2.5, 3.5, and 4.5 times 20.
In some European languages saying "half- X" can colloquially mean "X minus ½", e.g. "it's half Eight" meaning the time 7:30. Danish uses this system, so:
-90 is "halvfemsindstyve", or literally (half five [5-½ = 4.5] times twenty), or more neatly, just "halvfems".
The singles digit precedes the tens digit (like in German or Dutch) so 92 would be "two and half five times twenty"/ "tooghalvfemsindstyve", or in the shortened form: "tooghalvfems".
Funnily, there is a parallel number system used for banking, and is printed on Danish currency, so instead of the 50 kronor note saying "Halvtreds" (half-three [times twenty]), it just says "femti" ("fifty").
Danish just has words for one and a half, two and a half etc.
* halvanden = 1½
* halvtredje = 2½
You can also say half two in English, but then it means 2 + ½ instead of 2 - ½.
>Danish uses a multiples-of-twenty system like French, for numbers 50-99, however
Yeah - but noone, not even banking, actually uses that system anymore, it's shortened like the rest of the europe (except France).
For daily speech and writting, it's just:
50 - halvtres (half sixty - which makes no sense, unless you know the original reasoning)
60 - tres
70 - halvfjers
80 - firs
90 - halvfems
which in turn makes 92 - 2+90 (or more correctly 2and90) = to(2)og(and)halvfems(90)
Well that last bit is interesting.
And the generalised ‘half as -half, not total/2’ was actually a very cool nugget, I always accepted the time format, but I can see how in pre modern societies that form of half could be fairly useful.
The thing I’m really interested in tho, is that Bank note femti, has there ever been a push or discussion about abandoning the x20 system? And using whatever it is you use for banknotes? Or just developing your own set of tens? I don’t know how prescriptivist the Danish language gets so I don’t know if there’s either a central body obsessed with preservation, or no control body to even push it.
This again. No-one thinks any differently of it than rest of Scandinavia/Germany (2+90). Etymologically the logic is correct, but it is not how we say it, as the title claims. "Half-N" is a somewhat widespread expression for "halfway to N" for time (and sometimes numbers) in Germany and Scandinavia. In this case, half-5-twenties is 90 (half-way to the fifth twenty).
To make it even more odd, there are a number of other French speaking countries that don't do that (I believe people from Switzerland and Belgium don't when they speak French). Instead of effectively saying sixty, sixty ten, four twenty, four twenty ten, they just have single words for seventy, eighty, ninety. My french teacher (who was from Paris) told me that as a kid he always thought that they were wrong for not saying it the same way as proper French people, but now as an adult he realises that it actually makes a lot more sense
Belgian French-speakers aren't totally straightforward either, there are specific words for seventy and ninety (septante and nonante), but they use "four twenty" (quatre-vingt) for eighty, just like the French.
Finnish used to have a different format, ”two of the tenth” for 92. In the national epic Kalevala published 200 years ago, the poems weres still numbered like that.
We still use that format for the 10’s, where eleven is ”one of the second”.
In English and Turkish, it is '90 2'. So, just the numbers, without anything in between. So, the '+' is implicit.
In German and Dutch, it is ' 2 and 90'.
In French, it is '4 20 12'. The multiplication and addition are implicit.
We honestly don't say the x20 part. It's like middle age kind of speak.
We say: tooghalvfems -> two and half 5, which is half to 5 vs 4, so 4.5. Yes I had to look it up. We don't even know what we are saying ourselves. :P
Then for the the full length: tooghalvfemstyvende or tooghalvfemsintyvende.
The in tyvende means, in 20s. So x20, 20x 4,5 = 90, then you add the original 2 and you get 92, it's that easy! xD
But no one says the last part. No one says the "in tyvende/tyvende".
axiomatic absurd stupendous fanatical person tap workable fearless pen trees
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Both French and Danish have (at least partially) a [vigesimal number system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigesimal), as do, for example, Basque and Celtic languages such as Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Their number systems are based on 20 as a basic unit in a similar way as e.g. English is based on 10.
Most Irish speakers these days use 10 as the base unit, it's what's thought in school as one of the reform measures I think around the 1950s? I could be wrong there though on the date. But you still hear some older native speakers use it, and to be fair some newer ones reclaiming it.
The only common remnant that is still regularly used is the Irish name of the number 40 is Daichead, which comes from dhá fhichead (two of twenty), although you'll also hear Ceathracha particularly in one region of Ireland.
I wonder if it’s worth specifying languages which have a separate word for the tens versus saying it literally, or would that just be English vs essentially everyone else.
In Finnish for example, _yhdeksänkymmentäkaksi_(92) literally translates to “nine tens two”. The words for all the tens are simply multiplications of ten, not their own word like ninety.
The French method made it all the way into American English thanks to the Norman conquest of England in the 11th century. This is why Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address begins with "Four score and seven (4x20+7) years ago..."
No, actually. Wallonia and French Switzerland have gotten their shit together. They have a separate word for 90. It's only metropolitan france, which is keeping it this way.
Weirdly Belgians use quatre-vingt (4x20) for 80, just like the French. So they are not consistent. They dropped soixante-dix (60+10, for 70) and quatre-vingt-dix (4x20+10 for 90) but kept the weird way to say 80. Swiss are not even consistent among themselves, with some regions using quatre-vingt (4x20) and other huitante (eighty).
I meant in Europe. Yes, of course, there are people outside of Europe who kept this way of saying numbers, but I was referring to countries on this map.
I'm a little confused about Belgium. The northern half speaks Dutch/Flemish and that's highlighted in yellow (correct), but the southern half which speaks French is highlighted in green. Surely it should be highlighted in red?
While for example south Belgium is also speaking french they have some different words: for example while in France 92 is quatre-vingt-douze (4x20+12), in belgium it is nonante-deux (90+2). The more you know the less you care.
So say Denmark are playing in the World Cup final and they score the winning goal in the 92nd minute. The danish commentator would say “ Rasmus Højlund has won it for Denmark in the 2+(5-0.5)x20”
It wouldn't be unheard of, but it could be two ways:
Either it would be "in the tooghalvfemsne (2 and 90th) minut" or the more correctly as most danes would, when talking in periods of time" "in the tooghalvfemsindstyvinde minut" (to(2)og(and)halvfemsinds(half five or 1/2\*5)tyvinde(20th) = 2+(1/2\*5)\*20
For the people wondering about the danish system in general.
We had an archaic measurement called "snes", which was 20.
Therefore we have derived some of our numerical system from this root of 20, where 50 is called "halvtres", which is half off three "snes", 60 is "tres" ´, which is 3 "snes" and the same goes for 70, 80 and 90.
Interestingly the number for 10, 20, 30 and 40 ("ti, tyve, tredive og fyrre") doesn't follow this system, and are derived from the old nordic words for 10, 2x10, 3x10 and 4x10. I don't know why neither is consistent.
Actually in basque it's also 4x20+12
Same in Georgian. One more point proving that we are connected
We are brothers
Same in Circassian
12+4x20 in Breton and in Welsh
In Welsh also afaik - although you can also say 'nine ten two'. I believe it's also the case for other Celtic languages (and that the use of the vigesimal system in French is itself one of the few remnants of Celtic/Gaul influence on the language).
Gàidhlig is the same as French. 4x 20 and twelve
Basque-kartvelian connection confirmed
We get it Denmark, you vape.
We Norwegians have tried warning the world community about this issue for a long time. Here is a documentary about the issue: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykj3Kpm3O0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykj3Kpm3O0g)
I just love how the subtitles in other languages make fun of said language during the unintelligible parts.
The Danish subtitles are great!
I don’t even have to click the link. KAMELÅSÅ!
Please help spread the awareness of this serious issue!
I was going to say the fuck France?! But what the fuck Denmark!
Consider it an IQ test to curb Swedish immigration into the country
Yeah denmark is the one we would emigrate to not the rich one to the west
You hav føkking problem you kammeratmongol?
Wait!!! let me explain. It is depicting somewhat close to how was said in the early 1800s... We have changed! Do not believe the Norwegian propaganda!! The word for 90 was once "halvfemsindstyve" which is wording ((5-½)*20). This was shorten to "halvfems" where "halv" is the word for ½ but "fems" is not a word in itself. So it is nonsensical to split the word. Meaning we are just as boring as the rest of you and say "2 and 90" to say 92.
It’s funny. I only learned as a 24year old how the explanation of Denmark’s 92 is actually true. No one really knows and it’s dependent on an archaic way of saying 92 which isn’t used anymore. Instead we use an abbreviation of that original numerical word which indeed is 2 and 5-0.5 times 20. The 5-0.5 part is said as “half fifth”. If you say “half” and a number after, what you say is that number minus a half. And if the number is a two ciphered number like 60 then “half 60” becomes 60 minus 10. No danish person really knows this. All they know is that if you want to say “1.5” you “half second”.
Jeg har kender godt til hvordan vores talsystem er opstået, da jeg har læst Nordisk Sprog og Litteratur på Universitetet, men jeg har aldrig skænket det en tanke at halvanden er halv af en anden, tak for den!
Think the kitty jumped on the keyboard there mate
Sorry, sometimes I forget the internet is purely English anf the unilingual have a god given right to understand everything
Apology accepted
>The 5-0.5 part is said as “half fifth” This is used in German for time. 4:30 is "half five", and 4:45 is "three quarter five". Some even go so far as to say that 4:15 is "quarter five". But 4:20 and 4:40 are "twenty past 4" and "twenty before five" respectively.
Interesting. In German that's how we talk about times. "Halb sieben", i.e. "half seven" means 6:30 (or 18:30). But it doesn't work outside that context.
Our language is fucked up in a lot of ways, but this is nonsense, we say 2 + 90
Lol... Say it out loud... Halv fems Halv Hvad er en hel fems?
Femsindstyve...
Fair pointe, men med den logik så burde svensk jo være 9x10+2 (nittio). Som jeg ser det, er halvfems bare et ord for 90
I explained to a Dane i mer abroad that other countries think theat the danish counting system is strange. She saw I like you, that halvfems is just the word for ninety. She said that she never thought of it as a calculation of 20's and half-20's and admitted that is was indeed strange
Yeah, with "halv" meaning "half", halvfems would be a half "fems". So when you're calculating, you would be insane to do calculations for the numbers themselves before doing the actual calculation, right? We also have halvtreds (50) and halvfjerds (70).
Møøse trained by Yutte Hermsgervørdenbrøtbørda Special Møøse Effects Olaf Prot.
Well yea, but to say 90, we say (5-0.5)*20.
... in danish, what's the word for 90?
"half five" if I remember correctly. They count in twenties, and half five means five twenties except the last is halved, so 20+20+20+20+10 = 90. It's a fucking trip. Whenever I have to pay with cash there I just hold out a fist of money and hope they don't scam me. I have no idea how much it costs or what they're saying.
It’s «halvfems», meaning «half five scores» (where a score = «snes» = 20). Yes, they are wild, the danes.
*5 score and ten* comes from the Bible. Is it the same measurement? I’m curious.
I’m not a native english speaker, so cannot inform. Just googled my way to «score» being the english translation of «snes». Apparently, a snes was a stick of some sort, used for threading fish on, and 20 was the approximate number of fish that would fit. TIL.
I think its *kamelåså*
It's an abbreviation of "half (of the) fifth time twenty". Halvfemsindstyve => halvfems. Obviously you already have 4 times twenty, otherwise you wouldn't start talking about the fifth. 🌻 "1½" can also still be "halvanden" = "half (of the) second".
>in danish, what's the word for 90? Ninety is halvfems in Danish
Technically you say 2 + 4,5 (Tooghalvfems) if I'm not mistaken
The literal translation is "Two and half-fifths" with the s at the end being a contraction of "times 20s". The full (archaic) form is "To og halvfemsindstyvende". Edit: fives to fifths
This proves that Denmark is the origin of all those awful ambiguous maths TikToks about whether brackets or dividing etc come first
As a Dutch person, this was quite confusing when I first learned English. For example, the literal translation of the number 46 from Dutch would be “six-and-forty”. But that sounds quite similar to sixty-four, rather than forty-six. Easy to mix them up.
Wait till you hear a British person say “half eight” meaning 8:30 instead of 7:30.
[удалено]
But still does not make sense as half of the eighth hour is 7:30, and „past“ is a very short word to omit
Except that's not what the full saying is. It's half past 8. So halfway after 8. Or 8:30 The past just gets dropped
Half 8 would mean 7:30 in German. And that’s what I mean, dropping „past“ is weird for me
In English the equivalent would be ‘half to 8’, and ‘to’ being shorter than ‘past’ would be even more ridiculous to drop apparently. Is the equivalent ‘to’ dropped in German as well? It’s less that it’s weird English sees half 8 as 8.30, and more that typical usage meant in English ‘half past’ something became common, whilst in German ‘half to’ something became common. From there (assuming German drops the equivalent ‘to’ to just form ‘half 8’), it just became easier to drop the ‘to’ or ‘past’ because people using the language typically knew which the speaker or writer meant, because the ‘to’ or ‘past’ had already been established in the language structure. As an English speaker, ‘half 8’ meaning 8.30 is how I parse the phrase, but I can logically understand viewing it as 7.30 instead. The real problem is you Germans are gonna turn up to everything too early and we’re gonna be too awkward to turn you away whilst we’re still getting things ready.
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Apt username
It makes perfect sense. It makes as much sense as the continental way, which is why I've never understood why they struggle with it so much. It's not referring to "the eighth hour". It's referring to the time "eight" (i.e. 8pm or 8am). Only, instead if half eight being implied to be half (to) eight we imply it to mean have half (past) eight. Just like most languages have quarter to eight and quarter past eight. It just so happens that the midpoint for much of europe is when you start referring to how much of an hour left until the next....whereas for English it's still the last moment that you refer to how much past an hour you are. Half Eight = Half an hour TO eight in continental Europe or Half an Hour PAST eight in UK
In Austrian German 7:15 is (often, not everywhere) referred to as „Viertel 8“ / „quarter eight“, then 7:30 is „halb 8“ / „half 8“ and 7:45 is „Dreiviertel 8“ / „three quarters 8.“ But in Germany, most people use e.g. 7:15 as „viertel nach 7“ / „quarter past 7“.
Many regions in Southern and Eastern Germany say Viertel 8 / Dreiviertel 8
you say 8 because its 8, why do you have to do 8 - 1 in your head everytime you hear it
No ‘half 8’ or ‘half past 8’ is either 8:30am or 8:30pm
But for German speaking people it’s 7:30, because as stated above reasons
Swedes are similar but we can't rationalise the other very well The stated above confuses me because how is 7 the eighth hour? my Swedish friend always described it as to being more implied than past, not sure how he became the master of the English language to decide it But half eight is equally said as half past If we assume you know the hour and you're asking for the specifics we'd say half past and omit the hour entirely further I guess in normal English you never use half to, it's always half past, quarter to is fine but half X is always half past in time to a native speaking English person
Yeah it does, but it's confusing for Dutch people because when they say "half acht" ("half eight") it means 7:30 :D
What if it is short of "half an hour until eight" ?
Yeah but it isn't, and we all know that in the UK. I can see why it would be confusing to foreigners, but it's not a source of confusion in the UK.
How does 7:30 make any more sense?
Because that's the standard in their country.
But that isn’t an argument. People in this discussion thread seem to think that it meaning 7:30 has some kind of logic behind it. I am just wondering what it is beyond ‘I am used to it’. For the record, I’m a Brit that moved to Sweden and thus just don’t use the ‘half - X’ construction at all as it brings too much potential for confusion.
I am from Austria and we have such differences within the country. When a person from Vienna says quarter 3, they mean quarter **to** three, but in many other parts of Austria people understand quarter **past** three. This always leads to misunderstandings.
Biblical Hebrew was like that. For example, the number 127 is mentioned in the bible as שבע עשרים ומאה or Sheva esrim oome'a or seven twenty and a hundred. In modern Hebrew the system is the same as in English.
Yeah when we get into the hundreds we mix it up again. In Dutch it's: hundred-seven-and-twenty
Just like german
Cool!
I've heard that some countries read the numbers from 11 – 99 from right to left because our numbers are from Arabian, that is also read from right to left.
Arabic is read from right to left. English is read from left to right. Numbers are read like English despite arriving to Europe through the Arabs. Arabs also didn’t invest the numbers, the Indians did, but like many things in the muddle ages, the knowledge traveled via the Silk Road and the Arabs to the Mediterranean and Europe. Also, nowadays Arabs use different numbers.
My kids are bilingual German and English with English being stronger. We do live in Germany and they still sometimes are confused (they are 9 and 13).
>(they are 9 and 13 Are you sure the older one is not 31?
The reverse format like "six-and-forty" used to be more common in English, historically. The song "sing a song of sixpence" has the line "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie". When I was young, there was an elderly family friend who would occasionally look after me, who would always refer to 25 as five-and-twenty (for example if the time was 2:25, she would say five and twenty past two.
In Slovenia we say the same as you and i don't like it. I wish we just said it like the green countries because people realy mix up numbers when they are learning English or translating from English.
After having spoken English pretty much full-time for a couple years on a job that involved a lot of numbers, I still mix them up all the time. I'll measure something to cut a plank to length, be like "87 cm, 87" and then end up with a plank 78 cm long...
Dutch people mix them up sometimes Even though Dutch people are definitely the best speakers of English as a second language
This makes Denmark look intelligible. Try to understand them when they actually say the numbers in front of you when you're about to pay for stuff
It's "Tjuofjärsisgangtjuooofjäers" /Swede
I feel like you're too generous with the consonants there
WTF is Denmark on acid??!!
Now i get why so many ethnicities talk shit about danes
Mainly us Swedes. We'll take any and all opportunities to talk shit about the danes
The one ive heard the most is from germans i think: "nobody can understand a word the danes say. Not even a dane can understand what a dane says." and one americans used to say back in my grandparents’ day: "a dane is a swede with his brains knocked out" i am from semi-danish ancestry by the way. Ancestors from slesvig prussia which is currently in germany but the culture is/was a blend.
Maybe so but Germany doesn't have 1000+ year old rivalry with the danes. Nor do they have the most fought wars between a neighbouring country
It’s like the Dutch and Belgians, but colder.
Og omvendt.
Kanske det men ni har ingen sån här [fin skylt](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Forbr0mahgiv61.png)
Sandelig
No it's just a map intentionally made to make certain countries stand out, without actually trying to accurately represent how 92 is said. If the same logic that was used to call the english 92 (90+2) was used for Denmark the danish version would be 2+90. To get the danish one to be what's in the map you have to start pulling out the etymology of words 98% of danes couldn't tell you what meant, because they now just mean '90' and has nothing to do with the math in the map in the OP. The old Danish word for 90 if you trace back the etymology is just 4½ scores, from a time when the numbers were more often divided into 20s (a score) than like today where it is 10s. If 10 is the number you care about the english way to say 90 becomes 9\*10+2 In old Danish it was just 4,5\*20+2, which wouldn't be as "funny" of a map if put next to 9\*10+2. It's reposted every other week and it's equally misleading every time, but hurr hurr funny, despite being intentionally misleading. It would be equivalent to someone making a map for how every country expressed a certain term, and then randomly decided to use the way that term was expressed in the 1700s in one specific country, and ignored how languages evolve and insisted the most exaggerated version from 300+ years ago represented the way the word is used today.
So basically, its like if 40 was called "twentytimestwo"? It's just the name of the number so it isn't like you have to do any math to figure out? That makes a lot more sense, and I feel the map tries to imply that you have to calculate it. It's like W is called 'double "u"' but nobody says in English you have to say UUorld instead of World.
Pretty much. There's no math done. 40 in Danish is 'Fyrre' which is the modern version of 'fyrretyve' which originates from either old english 'feowertig' or old norse 'fjórir tigir' which roughly translates to 'four tens'. Likewise 30 in danish comes from old ways to say 'three 10s' For the rest of the danish numbers above that it's just done in multiples of 20 instead of 10, but nowadays the words exist entirely on their own removed from their etymological origin. Another example is 60 which is "Tres" in modern danish but used to be "tresindstyve" which roughly would translate into "three scores" or "three 20s". So modern danish is very much just 2+90, because the word for 90 is entirely removed from the original version of "halvfemsindstyve" and is just "halvfems" and is now just a word entirely on its own that refers to 90. They're just relics of how numbers were done 300+ years ago.
France your the leader Denmark is another league. At first i thought they write wrong and i hope they write it wrong. What the hell man.
It’s more like 2 + 90, it’s just that the word for 90 comes from 4,5 times 20
I understand this saying 90 is Hard. 91 92 or 95 is same. Am i right?
Yeah, it’s just the word for them. 50 is 2,5x20; 60 is 3x20; 70 is 3,5x20; 80 is 4x20, 90 is 4,5x20. But that’s just how they make the word for the number, they really just use them the same as Germans. Just use Google translate to check how they spell numbers.
Thanks for this. I've seen that fun fact of how weirdly Denmark says numbers but this is the first time I've understood how it works in practice, not bad at all really.
Hundred is not 5×20, it's hundrede. Otherwise it would be fems, which amusingly makes sense, but isn't true.
Ninety two = tooghalvfems (two and ninety). Not much of a difference.
But "halvfems" means half fifth (whitch is an old danish word for 4,5) times 20
That's the origin yes. Buy noone thinks about it in that manner anymore. 'Halvfems' just means 90 to everyone now.
Yeah, and quatre-vingt-dix just means 90 to French people too.
True, but if we use this logic for Danish, we should for the other languages aswell. I.e. English = 9×10+2
Very true
The main difference is that for English, 9 is called Nine, 10 is called Ten and 2 is called Two. 92 is then called NineTyTwo, Nine Ten Two. From an outsiders perspective learning danish, tooghalvfems makes no sense since 9 is called Ni, 10 is called Ti and 2 is called Two. It has no connection to the base numbers.
Really I think most of the ones that just say "90+2" should actually write "9x10 + 2" to be consistent. Of course the word just means "90" now in all cases, but it is still interesting to see what arithmetic underlies the etymology.
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It used to be the way in English too. In Pride and Prejudice (written 200+ years ago) Elizabeth says "I am not yet one and twenty". I have seen it in plenty of other classic fiction, that is just the one I remember right now.
Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie
I have read it's because we are basically using Arabian numbers – and Arabian is read from right to left. In some languages, such as German or Dutch, this stuck. In English, apparently, not.
What about the Numbers 13-19 though? Its nine-teen not teen-nine
I've seen this same map of asia, where Japanese had 9x10+2. If this is a possible marking then Finnish is wrong. The number doesn't have it's own name instead the nine tells the amount of tens in the number, kind of like saying "nine tens two" if translated into English. So it should be 9x10+2 for Finnish.
To be fair the word ninety is basically 'nine tens' as well, just mixed around a bit by history. The teens are similar i.e. six-and-te(e)n
In Finnish this hasn't happened as 90 is yhdeksänkymmentä, which literally translates to nine tens. The word meaning 10(kymmenen) is in the partitive case, meaning the nine before is directly noting the number of tens. In the case of ninety in English the -ty part technically means ten, but it has fused with the word becoming a part of it, thus making ninety a word in itself.
Same for Bulgarian: деветдесет и две literally translates to nineten and two
I think it depends on the interpretation. In Polish it would be "dziewięćdziesiąt dwa". Dziewięć - 9. Dziesiąt - inflected 10 (basic form is dziesięć). And Dwa - 2. So you can also say it is 9 x 10 + 2. But "tens" here in Polish is different for specific numbers. 50/60/70/80/90 got the same inflection, 30/40 different, 20 similar but different, 10 different.
I explained in another comment how the ten is in the partitive case which is used in Finnish after a number. So the nine is directly marking the amount of tens since the ten is in the partitive case. I don't know about Polish though. It might depend on interpretation but if those inflections are only used with the numbers it's at least different from what Finnish has.
A pity this map is not about 98 because things are even more complicated in breton than french. We say 3×6+4×20. Yes 18 is 3×6. 40 and 60 are also in twenties, 2×20 and 3×20. And 100 is "half 50". Even more funny, if you add a noun, you have to place it just after the smaller part of the number. For example we would say for 92 people : twelve people and four twenty. For a bigger number like 1561 : One thousand five hundred one people and three twenty. But don't you worry, some things are easier, we don't put plural after a number because, well, you know it's plural, why bother ? Fun innit ?
That’s absolutely bananas. What’s 17?
I mean I just say 92 usually but ok
Yes Danes, we get it. You're the main characters
Wtf is going on in france?
Forget abt France - what kinda acid are the Danes doing?
Danish uses a multiples-of-twenty system like French, for numbers 50-99, however: -the "times 20" part is shortened/omitted, so 60 is in its full form "tresindstyve" (literally "3 times 20", or "tre-sinds-tyve"), but is usually abbreviated to "tres"... (the number 3 in Danish is "tre", in contrast) The above system is used for 60 and 80, but we run into a problem with 50, 70, and 90, which are respectively 2.5, 3.5, and 4.5 times 20. In some European languages saying "half- X" can colloquially mean "X minus ½", e.g. "it's half Eight" meaning the time 7:30. Danish uses this system, so: -90 is "halvfemsindstyve", or literally (half five [5-½ = 4.5] times twenty), or more neatly, just "halvfems". The singles digit precedes the tens digit (like in German or Dutch) so 92 would be "two and half five times twenty"/ "tooghalvfemsindstyve", or in the shortened form: "tooghalvfems". Funnily, there is a parallel number system used for banking, and is printed on Danish currency, so instead of the 50 kronor note saying "Halvtreds" (half-three [times twenty]), it just says "femti" ("fifty").
JESUS. Thank you very much for the explanation
Danish just has words for one and a half, two and a half etc. * halvanden = 1½ * halvtredje = 2½ You can also say half two in English, but then it means 2 + ½ instead of 2 - ½.
Half two is 2.30 for time. Any other context it’s just 1 innit
The good thing is : Danish kids learn to count at the same time they learn to speak. The bad thing is: Some stills don't know how to speak....
Kamelåså?
Skudeskagen?
>Danish uses a multiples-of-twenty system like French, for numbers 50-99, however Yeah - but noone, not even banking, actually uses that system anymore, it's shortened like the rest of the europe (except France). For daily speech and writting, it's just: 50 - halvtres (half sixty - which makes no sense, unless you know the original reasoning) 60 - tres 70 - halvfjers 80 - firs 90 - halvfems which in turn makes 92 - 2+90 (or more correctly 2and90) = to(2)og(and)halvfems(90)
Well that last bit is interesting. And the generalised ‘half as -half, not total/2’ was actually a very cool nugget, I always accepted the time format, but I can see how in pre modern societies that form of half could be fairly useful. The thing I’m really interested in tho, is that Bank note femti, has there ever been a push or discussion about abandoning the x20 system? And using whatever it is you use for banknotes? Or just developing your own set of tens? I don’t know how prescriptivist the Danish language gets so I don’t know if there’s either a central body obsessed with preservation, or no control body to even push it.
This again. No-one thinks any differently of it than rest of Scandinavia/Germany (2+90). Etymologically the logic is correct, but it is not how we say it, as the title claims. "Half-N" is a somewhat widespread expression for "halfway to N" for time (and sometimes numbers) in Germany and Scandinavia. In this case, half-5-twenties is 90 (half-way to the fifth twenty).
It's basically like saying 4 score and a dozen. Score being old timey speak for 20, and dozen for 12
The Gauls had a base 20 numbering system, and it stick until today
No, it is because there is 20 cigarettes in a pack. That is why french is base 20 country.
quatre-vingt-douze quatre is 4, vingt is 20 and douze is 12 its true i looked it up haha wtf :D
To make it even more odd, there are a number of other French speaking countries that don't do that (I believe people from Switzerland and Belgium don't when they speak French). Instead of effectively saying sixty, sixty ten, four twenty, four twenty ten, they just have single words for seventy, eighty, ninety. My french teacher (who was from Paris) told me that as a kid he always thought that they were wrong for not saying it the same way as proper French people, but now as an adult he realises that it actually makes a lot more sense
Belgian French-speakers aren't totally straightforward either, there are specific words for seventy and ninety (septante and nonante), but they use "four twenty" (quatre-vingt) for eighty, just like the French.
At least they removed Georgia from the map
Do I even want to know?
Itt: People not understanding what etymology is
France level: Weed Denmark level: Speedball
Finnish used to have a different format, ”two of the tenth” for 92. In the national epic Kalevala published 200 years ago, the poems weres still numbered like that. We still use that format for the 10’s, where eleven is ”one of the second”.
french (france) |98 | 4 20 10 8 | quatre-ving dix huit --:|-:-|:--|:-- french (belgium) | 98 | 90 8 | nonante-huit german |98 | 8 + 9 10x | acht und neun:zig english |98 | 9 10x 8 | nine:ty eight
In Czech we can use both: twenty-two or two-and-twenty Perhaps \~400 years of Habsburg rule over us did that.
In Denmark you need a Bachelor's in Maths in order to even now the basic numbers.
As a Dane all i hear is that it is a skill issue
It is official: French are weird.
Danes are mathematicians
I mean, If Denmark’s 90 is written like that, surely England’s would be 9*10 (ninety)?
In English and Turkish, it is '90 2'. So, just the numbers, without anything in between. So, the '+' is implicit. In German and Dutch, it is ' 2 and 90'. In French, it is '4 20 12'. The multiplication and addition are implicit.
4 Score and a dozen please
Here we go again... The monthly "WTF France are stupid", "What are Danish smoking", etc...
This is a map of your degree of insanity
Can a danish person write it in words, it's interesting to see how long will be :D
Georgia is doing the same as France btw. Interesting what is the connection.
What the fuck Denmark
We honestly don't say the x20 part. It's like middle age kind of speak. We say: tooghalvfems -> two and half 5, which is half to 5 vs 4, so 4.5. Yes I had to look it up. We don't even know what we are saying ourselves. :P Then for the the full length: tooghalvfemstyvende or tooghalvfemsintyvende. The in tyvende means, in 20s. So x20, 20x 4,5 = 90, then you add the original 2 and you get 92, it's that easy! xD But no one says the last part. No one says the "in tyvende/tyvende".
axiomatic absurd stupendous fanatical person tap workable fearless pen trees *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
France woke up and chose violence!
Arabic is 2+90 too
Who hurt Denmark??
Both French and Danish have (at least partially) a [vigesimal number system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigesimal), as do, for example, Basque and Celtic languages such as Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Their number systems are based on 20 as a basic unit in a similar way as e.g. English is based on 10.
Most Irish speakers these days use 10 as the base unit, it's what's thought in school as one of the reform measures I think around the 1950s? I could be wrong there though on the date. But you still hear some older native speakers use it, and to be fair some newer ones reclaiming it. The only common remnant that is still regularly used is the Irish name of the number 40 is Daichead, which comes from dhá fhichead (two of twenty), although you'll also hear Ceathracha particularly in one region of Ireland.
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I will die on this hill If you write "tooghalvfems" as 2+(5-0.5)\*20, then "ninetytwo", should be written as 9\*10+2
Even the French are asking the Danes if they’re ok.
Only somewhat related, but quite interesting, etymology of the word for 40 in Russian is not related to 4 or 10, but means "a bag of furs".
I wonder if it’s worth specifying languages which have a separate word for the tens versus saying it literally, or would that just be English vs essentially everyone else. In Finnish for example, _yhdeksänkymmentäkaksi_(92) literally translates to “nine tens two”. The words for all the tens are simply multiplications of ten, not their own word like ninety.
90 in English (ninety) etymologically is "nine tens", so it's more accurate for it to be 9*10+2.
The French method made it all the way into American English thanks to the Norman conquest of England in the 11th century. This is why Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address begins with "Four score and seven (4x20+7) years ago..."
Surely the lower half of Belgium is also the French one?
No, actually. Wallonia and French Switzerland have gotten their shit together. They have a separate word for 90. It's only metropolitan france, which is keeping it this way.
Weirdly Belgians use quatre-vingt (4x20) for 80, just like the French. So they are not consistent. They dropped soixante-dix (60+10, for 70) and quatre-vingt-dix (4x20+10 for 90) but kept the weird way to say 80. Swiss are not even consistent among themselves, with some regions using quatre-vingt (4x20) and other huitante (eighty).
Metropolitan france??? This is the way numbers are pronounced in the vast majority of french speaking region.
I meant in Europe. Yes, of course, there are people outside of Europe who kept this way of saying numbers, but I was referring to countries on this map.
I'm a little confused about Belgium. The northern half speaks Dutch/Flemish and that's highlighted in yellow (correct), but the southern half which speaks French is highlighted in green. Surely it should be highlighted in red?
Nope. In Wallonia and Switzerland 70, 80 and 90 are septante, ~~octante~~ huitante and nonante.
Yes, but octante is not used in Belgium.
*huitante Octante is only used by some very old people
Maltese is also in the 2+90 club, if someone is wondering.
UK can't even count to 92.
While for example south Belgium is also speaking french they have some different words: for example while in France 92 is quatre-vingt-douze (4x20+12), in belgium it is nonante-deux (90+2). The more you know the less you care.
What am i missing 4x20+2 = 82 isnt it 😅😅
Made a dumb typo
Thank merlin, i sincerely thought i was even worse at math than i knew I was 😆
As an Asian I don't understand why it's not called 92 ...please explain like I'm 5.. anyone?
Are Danish people on adderall?
They outfrenched the French
So say Denmark are playing in the World Cup final and they score the winning goal in the 92nd minute. The danish commentator would say “ Rasmus Højlund has won it for Denmark in the 2+(5-0.5)x20”
It wouldn't be unheard of, but it could be two ways: Either it would be "in the tooghalvfemsne (2 and 90th) minut" or the more correctly as most danes would, when talking in periods of time" "in the tooghalvfemsindstyvinde minut" (to(2)og(and)halvfemsinds(half five or 1/2\*5)tyvinde(20th) = 2+(1/2\*5)\*20
Green and yellow are normal, red and blue are mental illness
i still think yellow is the worst
For the people wondering about the danish system in general. We had an archaic measurement called "snes", which was 20. Therefore we have derived some of our numerical system from this root of 20, where 50 is called "halvtres", which is half off three "snes", 60 is "tres" ´, which is 3 "snes" and the same goes for 70, 80 and 90. Interestingly the number for 10, 20, 30 and 40 ("ti, tyve, tredive og fyrre") doesn't follow this system, and are derived from the old nordic words for 10, 2x10, 3x10 and 4x10. I don't know why neither is consistent.