Numbers in other languages

Factual Questions
1

Hi again,

I’d like to know about why numbers in other languages are so inconsistent in this particular way.

In English, when we count from 10 to 20, we include the “teen” starting at thirteen. Obviously, in this case, “teen” means “ten”. Similarly, in German, the ten word, “zehn”, comes in at thirteen as well–“dreizehn”, “vierzehn” as well.

However, in Spanish, the use of “ten and something” as a construction for numbers doesn’t kick in until 16, dieciseis. Before that, numbers 11-15 have their own words (once, doce, trece, catorce and quince), none of which imply “ten and something”.

In French, they go even further. 11-16 have their own words (sixteen being “seize”), after which they apply the “ten and something” construction (dix-sept and dix-huit for seventeen and eighteen.)

In Hebrew and Arabic, all of the numbers between 10 and 20 use the “ten and something” construction.

In Hindi, it looks as if each number after 10 is a different word, though I can’t be certain.

Why do some languages use this “ten and something” construct and others not?

And why then do some languages use the ten and something construct starting at different numbers?

Doesn’t dieciocho and diecenueve and diecesiete get annoying after a while for native Spanish speakers? That’s a bunch of extra syllables thrown in when trece doce and quince were so simple…what happened?

And don’t get me started on Latin—apparently everything is “ten and something” construction up to 18, duodeviginti, which would mean “two less than twenty”. Why use that? And why use that at 18 and not earlier or later?

Thanks,

Dave

2

Previous thread that goes into the issue in some detail:

French number system - Why so odd?

3

Ok, so it’s s defect that Spanish doesn’t start using ten-and-something until 16, and then it’s a defect when it uses ten-and-something?

You seem to have both an issue with internal consistency and one of not understanding that language doesn’t get built by decree (and those few which were born that way do evolve by non-decree), it happens. Why is it that way? Because throughout the years, the people who used the language have considered that a perfectly fine way for it to be.

4

English also has the form of number and tens

e.g. Four and Twenty Virgins

or Three and Ten - Thirteen

While on topic I’d like to register a protest at the American habit of omitting the ‘and’ in numbers. It makes it very easy to get it wrong.

Six hundred thirteen vs Six hundred and thirteen. The first could be a list of numbers. The second is a number

5

May I second that last comment?

A few more 'inconsistencies: Three score [years] and ten, and I won’t list the pony/monkey slang names for betting. In fact the whole dozen, score, gross, thing: (12, 20, 144) Do they have similar names for common numbers in all languages?

Edit: The virgins were four and twenty so that the lyrics scanned:

Four and twenty virgins came down from Inverness,
And when the ball was over there were four and twenty less,
Singing “Balls to you father, backs against the wall,
If you don’t get shagged on Saturday night you’ll never get shagged at all”.

http://www.angelfire.com/ak/abbeyvsu/songsheetvirgins.htm Other versions are available:)

6

Following that to its logical conclusion we should put “and” between every unit, because exactly the same ambiguity exists if I say “Six thousand three hundred”.

So we should have a system where we say “Six thousand and three hundred and eighty and five”? :dubious:

(Better is no ands anywhere, like in Mandarin Chinese. For that matter numbers are very logical in Chinese; 10-19 for example is simply ten-one, ten-two…ten-nine. 23 is “two-ten-three”).

7

I’ll just quote the newspaper report of an accident at a piggery.

The reporter wrote “two thousand three pigs killed” The Editor was dubious and rang up the farmer. The farmer confirmed “Two Sows and Three Pigs had been killed”

8

In most languages, you can simply put the word for the ones unit with the word for the tens unit. E.g. quaranta=40, sette=7, so quarantasette=47. What could be easier?

Except in Hindi and Urdu, that nice arrangement goes out the window. You cannot predict what any given number between 20 and 100 will be from the ones and tens units. Each one has to be memorized specially. How this came about was the descent of the words from the original Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, all those numbers are simply intuitive combinations of the ones and tens units. The sounds merged, blended, and faded over time (this is called tadbhava in Hindi), and the simplicity of the system was lost as each number morphed into a unique word. Unlike Italian, which recombined the number words descended from Latin in a transparently intuitive system put together as recognizable Italian words, Hindi and Urdu have held onto the mutated remnants of the Sanskrit phrasing long after they became opaque.

Seems like in practically every language, the words for multiples of 10 from 30 to 90 are obviously derived from the numbers 3 to 9. (Somehow, 20 is a unique word in most languages.) For example, cinque is 5, cinquanta is 50. The notable exception being the Turkic languages: 30, 40, and 50 have nothing at all to do with 3, 4, and 5. In Turkish, 3 is üç but 30 is otuz, 4 is dört but 40 is kırk, and 5 is beş but 50 is elli. Never been able to find out how that happened. The words for 60 and 70 are derived from 6 and 7 with a mysterious “-miş” ending, while 80 and 90 are clearly derived from the words for 8 and 9 combined with 10. It’s the 30, 40, and 50 that puzzle me.

9

Maybe the answer is somewhere in this article? Probably not though, since it was the first hit for a google search on the etymology of Turkish numerals.

10

Nava: Okay, it may seem I have a bit of a problem with inconsistency. You’ve been in my other threads; I can see where you get that idea from, based on my posts. But I don’t see it as defective or wrong…I just like to know why people do things. If there is a “why” it would be interesting to know. And you’re right if you think I’d use that information to make sweeping generalizations about a culture or language based on something that in all likelihood does not mean anything. I’m stupid that way.

And I admit that I am under the mistaken impression that languages will always gravitate towards what is seemingly the most efficient or sensible.

I’m clearly not a scientist, but if there’s even a small reason for these kinds of things, who knows? Maybe it could shed light on other things.

11

Yes, like English.
Except Italian, like English, doesn’t follow this pattern between 10 and 19, which is what the OP is interested in.

Not even have a specific word for forty, just say “four ten”, as some languages do, as I mentioned earlier.

12

The answer is, of course, because that’s the way it’s done.

No one makes decisions about how language should work. Language evolves and essentially, for one reason or another, speakers of the language decided to use the terms as they are today. No one even considered “Well, the speakers of language A does it this way, so let’s follow them.”

So the consensus of English speakers decided that the words “eleven” and “twelve” made more sense to them than “one and ten” and “two and ten.” (This may have something to do with the fact that the English had a liking for groups of twelve. Or it may not.) The consensus of French speakers decided to change over at 17. Spanish speakers decided to do it at 16. Latin speakers found their system worked for them.

It really doesn’t matter how the words were derived; their meaning is what’s important and that was always clear.

13

Chinese and Japanese are extremely simple in that respect.

Take Japanese (let us forget the fact that there are two sets of names for the numbers 1 to 10 [“Japanese” and “Sino-Japanese”] and we will focus on the Sino-Japanese set).

The numbers from 1 to 10 are:

1 - ichi
2 - ni
3 - san
4 - shi
5 - go
6 - roku
7 - shichi
8 - hachi
9 - kyu
10 - ju

To build the numbers from 11 to 19, you just take the words for “10” and the relevant unit and stick them together:

11 - ju-ichi
12 - ju-ni
13 - ju-san
…
18 - ju-hachi
19 - ju-kyu

From 20 onwards, you stick together the “tens” unit, the word “ten”, and the unit:

20 - ni-ju
21 - ni-ju-ichi
22 - ni-ju-ni
…
30 - san-ju
31 - san-ju-ichi
32 - san-ju-ni
…
40 - shi-ju
50 - go-ju
60 - roku-ju
70 - shichi-ju
80 - hachi-ju
90 - kyu-ju
100 - hyaku

And from here on, the pattern repeats (101 - hyaku-ichi; 110 - hyaku-ju; 112 - hyaku-ju-ni; 120 - hyaku-ni-ju), and so on and so forth.

Chinese works similarly.

Also, there are a few languages that work, not according to a base-10 pattern, to according to a base-20 pattern. French has some remains of that (60 - soixante; 70 - soixante-dix; 80 - quatre-vingts; 90 - quatre-vingts-dix). The Mayan languages, Georgian, and Basque are prime examples of base-20 languages.

EDITED TO ADD: I remembered also that Russian has a very weird word for 40 that has nothing to do with the rest of the Russian numerals – In Russian, 40 is “sorok”.

Apparently it comes from some unit used in the Siberian pelt trade, which expressed the size of a standard pile of marten pelts (which happened to be 40 pelts).

14

This is purely cultural.

I parse “Six hundred thirteen” as the number “613”.
I parse “Six hundred and thirteen” as the number pair “(600, 13)”.

To this 'Merkin, the “and” separates the two sets of words into two distinct numbers; it doesn’t connect them.

I submit neither is right nor wrong; they’re simply different. And a good opportunity for injecting confusion into what ought to be straightforward. Should / Ought we now discuss which side of the freeway / carriageway we shall drive on / upon?

15

Not so in the tentacled pit of horrors which men call “Danish.”

There, the word for fifty is “halvtreds,” i.e. “half-third.” The word for seventy is “halvfjerds,” i.e. “half-fourth,” and the word for ninety is “halvfems,” i.e. “half-fifth.”

16

No, “tres” isn’t third, “fjerds” isn’t fourth and “fems” isn’t fifth. They are just short forms of tresindstyve, firsindstyve and femsindstyve, which read out as three/four/five-times-twenty. The half in fifty, seventy and ninety is just half as in “one half base number away from the given multiple of the base number”, which is used all over Scandinavia for giving time anyway, so nothing weird there either. (Half-six in Scandinavian is half past five.)

17

Technically, Japanese has the arbitrary distinction between “yon” and “shi” as well as “shichi” and “nana”. There is also the odd word for 20 years old, “hatachi”. So, it’s not quite perfect.

18

Fulfulde, spoken by about 24 million across 20 countries in west Africa, uses five as a key unit. So counting looks more or less like:

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Five one
Five two
Five three
Five four
Ten
Ten one
Ten two
Ten three
Ten four
Ten and five
Ten and five one
Ten and five two
Ten and five three
Ten and five four
Twenty

Fifty-six would be “ten five and five one”

To make matters more confusing, prices are generally given divided by five. So if an item costs 100 francs, you’ll be told it costs “20”. If an item costs 50 francs, it will be sold as “10”.

19

In current American standardized math testing, the ‘and’ is reserved for a decimal point.

Six hundred three thousandths is 0.603

Six hundred and three thousandths is 600.003

so the little tykes get taught to quit using the ‘and’ unless they want a decimal or mixed number.

20

Yeah, thanks, but I read that article some time ago, and it gives an illustration of how not to do etymology. That author goes out on more limbs than the tree even has, with wild conjectures based on flimsy-to-no evidence. But give him credit for being imaginative. Reading it is a fun exercise for the imagination. Rev. Kölle just took a Turkish dictionary and started free-associating (in the belief that being a missionary to Sierra Leone gave him insight into Turkish etymology). His idea of deriving number words from fingers makes a perfectly cogent starting point, but then he got all carried away with his own cleverness.