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

Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 08:09:51PM +0200, Carsten Becker wrote:
> > 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.......
> > 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.
>
Actually I think French is the innovator/odd language out here; supposedly
the soixante-dix ~quatre-vingt (dix) etc. is due to Celtic substrate, a
remnant of counting by 20s (as Basque does, too, IIRC). But a lot of French
oddities are attributed to "substrate", the usual suspect for anything that
doesn't obey the rules.

The Swiss seem to have retained the Latin forms for the decades-- as do
Span/Port and Italian. I suspect Provençal does too, but am not sure.

Interesting about the teens-- Span. keeps the Latin reflexes only thru 15,
after that it's "10 and six/seven etc.", while Fr/Ital. include Latinate 16,
then go "10 seven/eight etc.".  Perhaps the Spanish just didn't like the
sound of "*sece" (*seice?). I wonder if it's ever attested in old texts.