This is an odd one. Are there any words for numbers between 10 & 100 that are not derived from a combination of elements meaning other numbers that can be added or multiplied to get them?
I mean, is there a word for 14 that isn’t “four-(&)-ten,” for example?
I’m looking for words in Indo-European languages, but any will do.
Eh, as you say, English “twenty” is pretty clearly derived along the lines “twain-tens”. Similarly, “eleven” along the lines “one left” and “twelve” along the lines “two left”. I dunno; it doesn’t seem much different from “thirteen” as “three-ten”.
That is definitely the case in Spanish. Once, Doce, Trece, Catorce, Quince are clearly following the pattern of 12345… with the “ce” at the end, which probably makes more sense in some other related language.
Most of the words named thus far, if traced far enough back, are not etymologically distinct from other numbers. Even the Germanic “eleven” appears to mean “one left.”
In Bengali, counting from 1 to 100 is fairly complicated. In some places there are patterns, but those patterns are not always explained by (X number + Y number)
&k dui tin char pa~ch chhoe shat ath noe dosh
&garo baro t&ro choddo ponero sholo shatero athero unish kuri
ekush baish teish chobbish po~chish chhabbish shatash athash unotrish tirish
ektrish botrish tetrish choutrish po~ytrish …
This offers other dialects/languages, too. 15 certainly seems to be important, and I suppose there’s an obvious logic to using base 15 in an oral situation - counting to 10 on hands is no problem, and you can keep one hand still fully-counted while using the digits of the other to count an extra four, before starting over. That’s a WAG, mind.
Taking another look at the list I linked to, base 5 seems to dominate, actually. Particularly for rapid counting, where the rhythms lend themselves to grouping into fives.