Fifty-one, forty-one, thirty-one, twenty-one, eleven? What the hell? Why not tenty-one or ten-one? Also, why are eleven and twelve named as the units are (as single, non “compound” words), while thirteen through nineteen are named in a systematic way as is the rest of our numbering system (although using a different system than the rest of our numbering system)?
My question is: Why do the teens deviate from our number naming system?
Beats me. It’s not even the same in each language.
German has unique words for eleven and twelve, but then switches to something like English’s “teens” at 13, but Spanish has unique words for eleven through fifteen and then goes into a “10 + number” format.
Hebrew also has the equivalent of four-ten instead of ten-four, and continues like English with twenty-four. I’m guessing that this is an old trend.
I have had a semester each of basic Chinese and Japanese, and these languages, on the other hand, seem to be quite regular. In Mandarin, for example, 9, 10, 11, 12 are jiu (9), shi (10), shi (10) yi (1), and shi (10) er (2)… 25 is er (2) shi (10) wu (5), and the pattern of (# of 10’s) (shi = 10) (# of ones) continues. 100 and 1000 have their own names (don’t remember them right now) which are used similarly (e.g.: [# of 100’s] [word for 100] [# of 10’s] [word for 10] [# of ones]).
In French: 11=onze. 12=douze. 13=treize. 14=quattorze. 15=quinze. 16=seize. 17=dix-sept. 18=dix-huit etc.
So 11-16 are unique, sorta, but 17-19 are ten-7, 10-8 and 10-9.
A case can be made, probably, for thirteen being a bastardization of three-teen, though I don’t have the etymology of the word to back me up on that.
Usually these things evolve from exactly that, a mixture of two words. In Italian we can still understand dodici, but in French it has been contracted to a more opaque douze. In English eleven and twelve (German elf, zwoelf) come from an earlier “one-left” and “two-left”, the numbers left over after counting with both hands. Other languages (Japanese, etc.) make it much easier just saying both numbers. Hebrew does in fact combine the two numbers, but using contacted forms in parts, but not too far different from the English “fifteen” (not five-teen).