Re: The English/French counting system (WAS: number systems from conlangs)
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, September 15, 2003, 19:03 |
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On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 08:09:51PM +0200, Carsten Becker wrote:
> Good evening everyone!
>
> Some days ago, I wondered about why English/German/French etc. (I
> guess all European languages) have separate names for 11 and 12:
> eleven, twelve; elf, zwölf; onze, douze, instead of oneteen,
> twoteen; einzehn, zweizehn; dix et un, dix et deux. We count in tens,
> but have numbers which you can count in twelves with.
Didn't we just discuss this in the last couple weeks? :)
The words "eleven" and "twelve" come from words meaning "one left" and
"two left", so they're still decimal-based.
> Another question: Why are the French counting so odd? Quatre-vingt
> (4 times 20) for 80, soixant-dix (60 and 10) for 70 etc. (instead
> of Swiss "huitante" and "septante" (and "nonante")) is really
> difficult when you're not used to it. How did this develop?
That I've also wondered about. My impression was that the
Swiss system is a logical extension of the French, rather than
that the French is a reduction of the Swiss, but since
Latin had the full set of numbers up to 100 the French
system must have involved a reduction somewhere.
Christophe? :)
-Mark
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