Teens in other languages

Huh, I came in to say that!

Just in case anybody cares, the term is Tipesh-Esreh (all the numbers in the 11-19 range end in Esreh, it almost sounds like just another number… Tipesh, of course, means “dumb”)

Dani

You can get in to PG-13 movies.

My guess is that for a lot of cultures 12 was an important number (see: your watch). I don’t have anything to back that up, though. While it doesn’t fit with our base ten-centric world today, 12 may have been important enough milenia ago to warrant having its own name.

I don’t recall if there is any strict age limit to the term, but qingshaonian is a Mardarin term for folks who are in the “green” stage of life. Don’t take this as a textbook definition, but my recollection is that it can be used for teenagers, possibly up until the early 20s, but not so much for the 11 year olds.

No, there’s no restriction on who can attend PG-13 movies, either with or without accompaniment.

I can’t answer that, but from wednesday on we will host a conference and I’ll meet an acquaitance who probably can. He is a linguist whose extreme interest in numeralia got him the nickname “Count von Count” (well, actually “Graf Zahl”, the German version)

the numbering corresponds with the Chinese, and it even sounds somewhat like Cantonese, except for 1, 2 ones and the digit 5.

here’s a comparison in Cantonese, very badly transliterated.

1 - Neung - yut
2 - Sawng - yee
3 - Sam - sam
4 - Sii - sei
5 - Ha - mm
6 - Hok - lok
7 - Jet - ts’ut
8 - Bhaet - bh’at
9 - Gau - gau
10 - Sip - sup
11 - Sip Et - sup yut
12 - Sip Sawng - sup yee
13 - Sip Sam - sup sam
14 - Sip Sii - sup sei

20 - Yee Sip - yee sup
21 - Yee Sip Et - yee sup yut
22 - Yee Sip Sawng - yee sup yee
there are no ‘teens’ for Chinese, just children/youths/young adults/etc.

IANAH, but I think… maybe. Up until recently Northen Europe (and likely other regions, but I’m basing this on knowledge of Germanic languages) had a mixture with base ten being or becoming the most important, but with base twelve and base 20 being evident in various forms. Words such as score (20), dozen (12), gross (144) indicate a previously less base ten biased counting system, but could arguably be just for convenience. However there’s also the uniqueness of 11 and 12, the fact that Old Norse operated with two different hundreds (short hundred 100, long hundred 120, I’ve yet to read an explanation on how you know what is meant when a text just says ‘hundred’) and the fact that Danish retains base 20 ‘tens’. And seeing as I left out the various divisions of measurments and coinage into twelfths and twentieths I think my theory stands a chance. :smiley:

Sweden has adapted the(American?) concept of teenager like a duck takes to water. Not only is the numbers equivalent (and of Germanic origin), but our school system emphasises this: Junior high is three years 13-15 and HS is three years, 16-19. Since puberty tend to start around 12 (even though it’s going down in developed countries), seeing the teen years as hormone crazed and rebellous is not a far stretch.

I don’t know who invented teenagers, but I think the archetypical teen was first articulated by Salinger in Catcher in the Rye. Possibly, the concept came with returning G.I.s of a great age span who needed work and society was affluent enough so kids could stay at home longer. It seems to coincide with the concept of the housewife as a stay at home mom.

Not invented, discovered. By moms and dads in the cabbage patch.

The online etymology says “teenager” dates from 1941

Just to throw another country in the mix - in Korea they do like Japan does. More classification by school age. There isn’t an equivalent teens either; numbers go 1 through 10, then 10-1, 10-2, 10-3… 20-1, 20-2, 20-3… etc.
So for ages it’d be:
1 - hanna
2 - duel
3 - sait
4 - nait
5 - dasut
6 - yussut
7 - ilgpop
8 - yuddul
9 - ahhope
10 - yul
11 - yul-hanna
12 - yul-duel
.
.
.
then it gets kind of weird with what number they use for 20, 30, 40, etc. The other counting system makes more sense (instead of a separate number for 20, it’s two-ten), but it’s not used for telling how old people are. Well, it’s not technically used, but it does get used because it’s much easier, particularly when you get to the higher ages.

And of course, in Westron, the common speech of Middle Earth, the hobbits used the term “tweens” to describe “the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three.”

French has separate words for 11-16 (onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize) and compounds for 17-19 (dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf).

As far as I can tell, French-speaking young people certainly think of themselves as being neither children nor adults. The word I’ve usually seen for “teenager” is un/e ado (an adolescent) or un/e jeune (a young person).

(For that matter, I always took “adolescent” to be the fancy word for “teenager” anyway.)

Just wanted to correct something. The pattern is “diez y ___”. Dice means “says.”

Welsh has two number systems - not including ordinals - anyway the system, sometimes labelled ‘traditional’, which is used for times and ages adds onto ten for eleven to fifteen -
un ar ddeg
deuddeg
tri ar ddeg
pedwar ar ddeg
pymptheg
(12 & 15 look different because of contraction/mutation but the root is the same.)

Then adds onto fifteeen -
un ar bymtheg 16
dau ar bymtheg 17
daunaw 18 (literally two nines, I have no idea why this one is different)
pedwar ar bymhteg 19

Maybe in days of yore you measured age from important stages in your life and 15 was one of those important stages.

To go back to the concept of ‘teeanager’ - in modern Welsh there is ‘arddegau’ (‘on ten’) but it is a recent invention (to try and prevent the spread of Wenglish), not appearing in a dictionary from 60 years ago for example, traditionally the word used to talk about teenagers translates as ‘youth’.

Portuguese follows this same pattern:

onze, doze, treize, catorze/quatorze, qinze, dezesseis, dezessete, dezoito, dezenove

Hence, like many other languages described here, they are simply known as adolescents.

Huh? The restriction is 13 yrs old isn’t it?

No, from the MPAA site:

So the only actual restrictions are on R and NC-17.

Ok, sorry. It is different here. An R13 rating means you have to be 13 or older to get in.

I have NO clue why we have R13 and then R16 though.

Hey, I remember in Germany trying to take my daughter to a Disney movie (I forget which one) but she couldn’t go in because there was some implied violence and she wasn’t six years old yet. Disney would go broke here if five year olds couldn’t watch their stuff.

Well, Portuguese, like Spanish and French, is one of the Romantic languages, isn’t it? I’d be willing to bet good money that Italian is similar in it’s treatment of adolescents and the numbers between 10 and 20.