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

Many thanks. Did I mention I have never learnt Latin? I think I didn't. Now
you know. Having threee topics on the same subject is a little bit
difficult, it's up to the line break in the header of the original message.
Sorry. I'm writing to the topic I started yesterday now. For you English
speakers it took a while to get used to the tens after the ones, but IIRC
you had that in English as well, it's just some 125 years ago or so. Vice
versa, it was difficult for me to get used to English "half past x" meaning
"half after x" not "half to x". I didn't know that you can say "half x" in
Britain as well.

Thanks again,
Carsten

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christophe Grandsire" <christophe.grandsire@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 9:52 PM
Subject: Re: The English/French counting system (WAS: number systems from
conlangs)


En réponse à Carsten Becker :

>
>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.
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. And actually, they are not that strange, since they
are directly coming from the Latin forms undecim, duodecim, tredecim,
quattuordecim, etc..., which actually correspond exactly to "oneteen,
twoteen, thirteen, fourteen, etc...". So actually the French forms are
*regular* in that respect and not separate names (the only odd thing is
"dix-sept". That we have dix-huit and dix-neuf is understandable: Latin
counted those two as substractions from twenty - duodeviginti and
undeviginti -. French just regularised those by getting rid of the
substractive counting and used transparent forms instead. But 17 in Latin
was "septemdecim" and didn't need such a replacement. My guess is that
sound changes made it undistinguishable from another number - maybe it
would have become identical with "seize" - and it was replaced by a
transparent form).

>
>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?
Some say that it's a substrate influence from Gaulish which, as a Celtic
language, probably counted in twenties. I personally don't know if it
really holds water. I know that Old French had both numeration modes (i.e.
decimal and vicesimal), and didn't have only "quatre vingt" but also "cinq
vingt" (concurrally with "cent"), up to 17 twenties. In some dialects the
original decimal counting won the battle, in others, including the
standard, the vicesimal counting won in some places. You have dialects
which have "quatre-vingt", for instance, but say "septante" instead of
"soixante-dix" (and vice versa).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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