• BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Ow my brain.

        Also funny because I had assumed English got the numbering system from German.

        • krnpnk@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          You probably did, but then you did the sensible thing and (mostly) changed it around. You can read some 19th century novels and find stuff like “I am two and twenty years old”.

          Mostly because it’s still the old order for the teens. 1616 could be read as sixteen hundred sixteen, right?

          • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Hmm is that actual English usage or an author thinking in German and translating badly (there were lots of German immigrants to North America).

          • theodewere@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            you’re correct, but it may seem antiquated to some… the full “old” way to say it was 16 hundreds and 16…

            when i read 1,500, it’s about 50/50 that it’s one thousand five hundred, or fifteen hundred

          • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            I don’t think I’ve seen people read 1616 as sixteen hundred sixteen. You could read 1600 as sixteen hundred, but when there are numbers in the tens and ones spots I don’t see anyone using it. The whole thing using sixteen-hundred is weird to me, it’s one thousand six hundred sixteen.

            • krnpnk@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              I’ve heard it lots of times (sometimes just as “sixteen sixteen”) - mostly for years though.

              And it seems like Wikipedia agrees:

              In American usage, four-digit numbers are often named using multiples of “hundred” and combined with tens and ones: “eleven hundred three”, “twelve hundred twenty-five”, “forty-seven hundred forty-two”, or “ninety-nine hundred ninety-nine”.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_numerals)

          • Vittelius@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            And that’s because the numbers we use today where originally brought to Europe by Arabs. Arabic is read right to left. So having reading numbers that way used to be the ‘correct’ way in lots of languages. German is just one of the few ones that stuck with it.

            • nantsuu@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              People only borrowed the symbols for numbers from Arabic, not the actual concept of numbers themselves.

        • ValiantDust@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I think they used to do it in English as well. For example I remember Jane Austen using both twenty-one and one-and-twenty. So I’m guessing it used to be the same as in German, then for some time you could use both and now one-and-twenty is not used anymore.

    • Zyratoxx@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yes, Germans say numbers like that. (It only applies to the tens tho)

      Roughly translated you’d say two-and-ninety (without the minus, I just made those so it doesn’t look that cursed)

      It’s mainly because at least in German it flows better than ninety two would. There have been pushes to accept ninety two as well but acceptance has been and continues to be scarce.

      • Jummit@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Man I’d love for that to catch on, mostly so it’s easier to learn. Kids get confused by the order all the time. It’s even shorter in some cases.

        Also, the reverse order makes dictating phone numbers such a pain.

        • aard@kyu.de
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          1 year ago

          My kids grow up with multiple languages. I told my daughter early on not to bother with German numbers larger than 20, and to select a different language to do math in her head.

          For a few years she was just saying larger German numbers like 9-2, or was writing them down, though now at 7 she seems to get better at converting them correctly.

        • Zyratoxx@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Definitely. Up until now I always dictate phone numbers with digits as pairs: like “neun, zwei” instead of “zweiundneunzig”

      • federalreverse-old@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        (It only applies to the tens tho)

        Tens, but also ten-thousands, ten-millions, ten-billions … you get the gist.

      • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Kind of. Those are distinct names rather than seven+ten. It took a long time until I even made that connection that teen probably came from ten.

    • smik@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Yes, and it’s so annoying. I’m Austrian, a bit dyslexic, and sometime I just can’t sevenandeighty sixandseventy.