Quote:
Originally Posted by neilmarr
Yup, it's odd that you're expected to be a mathematician to express a simple number in some languages. Take French, for instance, where ninety-nine is quatre-vingt-dix-neuf = 4X20+10+9. Neil
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It's not odd - it's simply just where we have the names from

Names of things and places that sound arbitrary today, probably had some meaning once, but's it's been lost to our modern ears. With many of the number names, we can still hear it.