Dude!! This is what it's about!

[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

[Ea]

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

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.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Ea

There's good reason and logic behind the names - but they're abbreviated and slightly corrupted/changed in the last thousand years. '50' which today sounds like 'half-sixty' originally meant 'half-three-times-twenty' which translates to 'three-minus-a-half-times twenty' = 2.5*20 (= 50), 60 is 'three-times-twenty'.

I like to think about it (after reading and excellent an thick book on numbers by Georges Ifrah) as:

60 -> "third", meaning "three people", where each person counts as 20, because they have 20 fingers and toes.

50 -> "half third", meaning "two people and one half of the third", so that's 40+20/2=50

and 70 is "half fourth" and 90 "half fifth", of course It's like saying the time in German, after all.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by Jellby

I like to think about it (after reading an excellent an thick book on numbers by Georges Ifrah) as:

60 -> "third", meaning "three people", where each person counts as 20, because they have 20 fingers and toes.

50 -> "half third", meaning "two people and one half of the third", so that's 40+20/2=50

and 70 is "half fourth" and 90 "half fifth", of course It's like saying the time in German, after all.

Of course Just like saying the time - it's the same way in Denmark Never ocurred to me that it's the same logic.

Thanks very much for the link to the book - it looks really interesting. I just looked it up in an etymology.