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

On Monday, September 22, 2003, at 09:47 , Henrik Theiling wrote:

[snip]
> And I don't know how widespread that is, but additional to the
> usual
>     'fünf vor halb acht'
>     (lit. 'five before half eight')
>     = 7:25
>
> my dialect allows also to ten minutes:
>
>     'zehn vor halb acht'
>     (lit. 'ten before half eight')
>     = 7:20
>
> where you'd normally use 'zwanzig nach sieben' ('twenty after seven').
Yep - this brought back memories of the time when we were living in
Newport I South Wales and used to have foreign language assistants
staying with us.  All our German came from the south.

> But definitely, this does not work with 'eleven'. :-) It is very
> uncommon to use minute counts other than 'five' or 'ten' with 'vor
> halb' or 'nach halb'.
I think this was generally the case before the advent of digital clocks
& watches.

  In my grandparents' time it was normal to say "five and twenty past...."
and "five and twenty to.....".  But they would never, e.g. say *"three and
twenty past two".

If you wanted precision (or, as my Granfather would say: "Wanted to be
nice"), you would say: "Twenty three minutes past two".

Ray
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