In English we have individual names for eleven and twelve (just like we 1 through 10), before going to the regular “teen” pattern beginning with thirteen. One consequence of this is we don’t think of 11 or 12 year olds as teen-agers. In Spanish 11 through 15 have somewhat special names (though they do have a pattern) before going to the “teen” pattern (well the “dice y ___” pattern). Do they in Spanish-speaking countries think of 16-19 year olds as differnet from 11-15 year olds in any fashion? What about other countires and languages?
In Russian the same stems are used for 11-19, and the concept of a “teenager” is very very foreign. People are called children, or adolescents, or adults for before puberty, during and after respectively, which roughly corresponds to 0-10, 11->16, and 17 onwards.
The concept of an age called a “teenager” is a relatively new one. I’m pretty sure it was only popularized in the fifties.
In most cultures, and throughout most times, you are either unmarriagable, marriagable, or married. Usually, it was prefered that the “marriagable” part be ash short as possible- horny teenagers cause problems. Most people got married and began their life as a working, family-raising, fully responsible adult much earlier. On the other hand, unmarried people would live with their parents pretty much indefinitely. Even in my grandfather’s relatively recent days nobody would raise an eyebrow when a fourteen year old dropped out of school to work or a seventeen year old got married and had a baby.
The rise of the “teenager” likely corrolates to mandatory schooling, which keeps kids in their parent’s home until 18 and the discovery of an untapped new market that responds well to advertising.
In Chinese, the numbers greater than ten all have the same pattern:
ten-one, ten-two, ten-three…
I’ll have to ask if there is a “teen-ager” thing there–my Chinese experience is limited to younger kids (my 3 adopted daughters).
Thai has special names for 11 and 12 until a stem word kicks in for the remaining 13-19.
Don’t ask me to say them in Thai, though. My grandmother in Texas will be screaming in pain.
I think even sven’s statement is pretty accurate. It’s a luxury to be old enough to work or procreate and not. More developed countries probably have new words for this time of life.
Dutch has the same as English.
1 to 12 are different words, from 13 they end with ‘teen’. [tien=10, elf=11, twaalf=12, dertien=13, veertien=14, etc.]
We use the English word ‘teenager’ as well. Or ‘tiener’. Or ‘puber’ [as in puberty :)]
Other than a label, I don’t think you can really say that Americans think of “teenagers” as a group. There are no special priviledges or rights that are confired on 13 year olds. 18 is the general age of majority, 16 for driving (in most states), etc. So the only advantage of turning 13 is that you are officially a teenager. I’d say we’re more like to group kids by school level-- elemetary, jr high, and high school. You certainly wouldn’t market many products to 13 year olds the same way you’d market them to 18 and 19 year olds.
Like Chinese, Japanese also follows the “ten-one, ten-two, ten-three…” pattern. The word “teen” has been borrowed from English, but it generally refers to the 16-18 range.
More commonly, youths are divided by schooling into chuugakusei (middle school, 7th-9th grade), koukousei (high school, 10th-12th grade) and daigakusei (college)
In German it’s just like in Dutch. 11 and 12 have their own names (elf and zwölf) and the pattern starts with 13 (dreizehn, vierzehn, etc.)
We also use the English word teenager, or teenie for short.
Norwegian, ditto. Unsurprisingly since it’s Germanic. 
11, 12, 13, 14 = elleve, tolv, treten, fjorten
teenager = tenåring (~teen-year-old)
Not that anyone would notice but “treten” -> “tretten”.
In France, teens are simply called “adolescents”, most often shortened to “ados”.
For the blurry 11-13 age, the word “preado” (pre-adolescent) is sometimes used by the general population, and very often used by people working with kids.
This thread raises the question of why so many languages have different word forms for 11 and 12 than those for 13 to 19. I can see that Dutch, German and English share the roots, but why Thai? What is special about 11 and 12 that lots of languages don’t count them as “teens” like 13 and over?
Were they developed before the introduction of a base ten number system?
Unless you’re Jewish. ;j
I just KNEW someone would bring that up.
I’ve been wondering too - is “tyro” the Russian word for “teenager”?
in the Hebrew language, all the numbers from 11 to 19 have a “teen” suffix.
And there is a neat term for kids in that age group–the “dumb-teens” .
It’s a combination of the “teen” suffix with the word that means dumb (or stupid).But that word is not always negative–it’s has connotations of "silly, innocent, not-too-bright, you’ll-grow-out-of-it, you dummy)
Teenagers never use that term to describe themselves, of course. But it’s a neat phrase.
Only sort of. In Thai (very roughly transliterated),
1 - Neung
2 - Sawng
3 - Sam
4 - Sii
5 - Ha
6 - Hok
7 - Jet
8 - Bhaet
9 - Gau
10 - Sip
11 - Sip Et
12 - Sip Sawng
13 - Sip Sam
14 - Sip Sii
…
20 - Yee Sip
21 - Yee Sip Et
22 - Yee Sip Sawng
So the name for one changes after the first number, but that is consistent after that. And twenty’s “root” is not two, but some different construct. I have no idea why these are. But it’s not really the same as our eleven and twelve.
Also, I don’t think that there is a Thai word for teenager, although I could be wrong on that.
If it is, it’s a regionalism I’ve never encountered. In fact, in Russian, I have never heard any sort of distinctive label that separates 12 year olds from 13 year olds.