Re: The English/French counting system (WAS: number systems from conlangs)

On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 09:52:26PM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> Using French here is incorrect, since the system is: onze, douze, treize,
> quatorze, quinze, seize, dix-sept, i.e. it's until 16 that you have the
> "strange-looking" tens.
Ditto with the other Romance languages, plus or minus a number.
Italian matches the French: [undici, dodici, tredici, quattordici,
quindici, sedici, diciasette].  Whereas Spanish is [once, doce, trece,
catorce, quince, dieciseis (= "diez y seis")] and Portuguese is
[onze, doze, treze, catorze, quinze, dezesseis] - so they actually
abandon the Latin-derived form one number earlier than French and
Italian do.  Perhaps *<seice> was considered too close to <seis>,
although that doesn't make much sense to me - ['sejTe] vs. [sejs]
seems like a pretty clear distinction.

> You have dialects which have "quatre-vingt", for instance, but say "septante" instead of
> "soixante-dix" (and vice versa).
Oh, good.  More confusion. :)

-Mark

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