Do any languages have a single word for "one-and-a-half"?

I was reading a tour guide for Delhi the other day, and the author pointed out, as I know, that Hindi is one of the few languages (along with some of its sister South Asian languages) that has a word for one-and-a-half - dedh. The author commented that he had not found any other languages that had such a thing, so I thought I’d bring it here.

Anybody?

Technically, English has such a word in the Latin-derived prefix “sesqui-”, but you don’t see it used much. “Sesquicentennial”, for a 150-year anniversary, and “sesquipedalian”, a jokingly pedantic term meaning a foot and a half long, are the only examples I can think of off the top of my head.

German: eineinhalb , variously also written anderthalb.

Also, Hungarian: másfél

Puolitoista, Finnish. Halvannan, Swedish (in practice, very rarely used). Both mean approximately the same, half of the second one.

I used it not too long ago telling someone when I would arrive at her place. She didn’t understand me, though, and thought it meant a half (hour in this case).

ETA Nice user name, Vifslan!

Bengali has unique words for both 1 1/2 and 2 1/2-

half - ad̪ʱ
one - æk
one and a half - d̪er
two - d̪ui
two and a half - aɽayi
three - t̪in
three and a half - ɕare t̪in
four - tɕar
four and a half - ɕare tɕar

Also a sequioxide, which has three atoms of oxygen to two atoms of the other element.

Back when Britain used LSD, 1.5 pennies were called “three ha’pence”, so you could argue that (at least in that context) “three ha” was being used as a word for one and a half.

Polish: półtora

Russian: полтора (poltora)

Not surprisingly, Polish and Russian are related Slavic languages.

It’s also used in other technical contexts. I first saw it when learning about sesquilinear forms, which are similar to bilinear forms except that they are linear in one variable and complex conjugate linear in the other. So they are linear in “one variable and a half”, so to speak.

The Danish equivalent however, halvanden, is an everyday word. As a Swede with Danish friends, it regularly confuses the hell out of me because I keep forgetting what it means.

Well, since my Polish and Hungarian contributions have been taken…I don’t speak Dutch, but apparently it’s anderhalf in that language. And it appears that it’s poolteist in Estonian.

To sum up:

“Imperfectly informed tour guide author somewhat exaggerates cultural/linguistic uniqueness of the region described in the tour guide. In other news: Pope Catholic, sun rises in east.”

:wink:

3 mod.5

What about Latin sesqui? Is that only a prefix?

I think Hebrew has a word, pronounced something like “vachetsi”, which means ‘and a half’.

“Three-halves” is one word, because I used a hyphen.

I also got the “joke” in the name of sesquilinear forms right away, piping up immediately with a “Linear-and-a-half!?” when the instructor explained what the forms were called. I was familiar with it from Michigan’s sesquicentennial celebration when I was young, but I’m not sure whether I ever encountered it in my study of Latin. Wikitionary says it’s an adverb, supposedly derived from semi + que, but doesn’t offer a citation of it actually being used.

Both of those words are two words jammed togheter though.

Puolitoista: Puoli = half or side, toista = of the second

Halvannan: *Halvt *= half, *annat *= other