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

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> No, only units and tens are switched. Take Dutch for instance: 99 is
> "negenennegentig" ("nine-and-ninety") but 125 is "honderd vijfentwintig"
> ("hundred five-and-twenty"). Note that "honderd" doesn't need a unit number
> (unlike in English).
Is this (saying 'a hundred five-and-twenty') where the 'and' came from in
'a hundred and twenty-five'? Did they say 'a hundred and twenty' or 'a
hundred twenty'.*

*I'm aware some (primarily American I believe) dialects skip the 'and' in
all cases at least nowadays.

> If the system was completely inversed compared to
> English or French, it wouldn't be that difficult. You'd just have to read
> figures the other way round (Arabic does that, which explains why their
> numbers look like they are written in the same order as ours. It's just
> that right-to-left written numbers given in the order
> units-tens-hundreds-thousands look like left-to-right numbers in the order
> thoudands-hundreds-tens-units). But in Dutch, German and it seems Danish,
> only the units and tens are inversed. It makes things sometimes confusing :)) .
Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie... (Four and Twenty are a
popular brand of pie in Australia.)

Numbers in Quenya are written in the opposite direction. I've always
considered our numbers to be backwards, going from small to large seems to
better agree with my sense of aesthetics or something.

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
                -- Snoopy

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