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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