AIUI Chinese is just the same.
I once heard from a supposedly knowledgeable person – likely, I think, a teacher during my schooldays – that France’s “soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, and the rest” originated from the time of the French Revolution: one of the various ideologically-motivated attempts (for whatever exact supposed reason) at making a radically fresh start with various things among the basics of life. Previously, the “septante, huitante, nonante” of France’s Francophone neighbours, had been used; but in France, the new numbers stuck – unlike some Revolutionary innovations.
In the light of posts on this thread – it does seem that the above, is codswallop; and that France’s “way with numbers” is a great deal older than 1790-something.
One hypothesis (mentioned in the other thread) is that the vigesimal system predates the Indo-European presence in Europe (the argument being that Indo-Europeans apparently used a purely decimal system). So, the Celts would have borrowed it from previous populations (logically including Basques).
Given that a lot of the “radically fresh starts” were forcing decimal systems in everywhere that’s an odd idea for someone knowledgeable to come up with. Ten month years (although they stuck with 12), ten day weeks, ten hour days, a new decimal measuring system, oh, and by the way, we’re going to start counting in twenties.
Excellent. Wodehousian.
This reminded me of something I sort of remember. When Religious Jews count people, either for counting a minyan–the quorum of ten people required for certain prayers–or for all occasions when counting people during ritual, they count backwards or in some other marked way. Anyone know?
The explanation was something nice.
I also seem to remember it in the opening of the Yom Kippur service. “Achat (one), achat v’achat [one plus one], achat v’shtayim [one plus two],” etc.
It was scary and pronounced, at least in my shul–suitable opening-kickoff Yom Kippur style.
Had to look that up. Mentally pronounced it as cod’s wallup [like trollope].
Is that a common enough phrase in Brit? Wiki gives first cite at 1959.
From the cite I citedearlier (just after the part I cited):
So it sounds like French was even *more *vigesimal in the olden days, long before the revolution.
FTR, the “Quinze Vingt” (now an hospital specialized in ophtalmology) still exists in Paris. Weird I hadn’t thought of it.
I think we’re confusing the terms. When I say “French descends from Latin,” I am talking about the French languge, not the ethnic group that switched from Gaulish to Latin.
Classical Latin speakers in Rome did not count in base 20. Therefore, in the Romance languges, it’s an innovation. The people who innovated this in Romance probably did not think of it as an innovation, because they had been doing it all along in their prior languge. In other words, the people didn’t necessarily change, but from the perspective of the language Latin > French, change certainly happened.
I’m sorry if my phrasing was confusing. Is that clearer?
But the point here is that allegedly, French does not descend solely from Latin – Gaulish makes a definite contribution to the new language.
Imagine the scenario:
[ol]
[li]Gauls, hanging out, speaking Gaulish, counting by 20s.[/li][li]Romans conquer the Gauls, speaking Latin, counting in 10s.[/li][li]Romans do some serious administration of Gaul, so Latin becomes the language of the powerful and important.[/li][li]Any Gaulish speaker who has aspirations of power and importance (i.e. everyone) tries their damnedest to speak Latin, and succeeds mostly, except for some small “bad habits” from the mother tongue, like counting in 20s.[/li][li]Romans bugger off, and Gauls are left speaking mostly the language of their former conquerors, save for the “bad habits” from the old language.[/li][li]The leftover Gauls realize that they’re not really speaking Latin any more, and decide to call their language “French”.[/li][/ol]
Whether you think of French as descending from Latin (imperfectly transferred to the Gauls) or Gaulish (with most, but not all of its vocabulary and grammar replaced by Latin) is semantics. Really it has influences from all sides.
What a ridiculous question, Jesus obviously spoke American.
Of course French has influences from Gaulish, but honestly, they are very slight comparted to the influence from Latin. If you’re trying to argue that French is in any way a Celtic language (“Gaulish with most but not all of its vocabulary and grammar replaced by Latin”), I’m afraid I’ll have to ask to see your evidence. So far we have:
- a tiny amount of French words come from Gaulish, e.g. javelle. Some are shared with other Romance languges (and thus borrowed into Latin elsewhere and / or earlier). This is compared to about 80% from Latin and about 10% from Frankish (which is the origin of the name Français / French—they don’t call themselves gaulois!)
- a few possible grammatical features such as vigesimal counting.
- a few possible accentual features such as the vowel /y/ and nasalized vowels.
That’s like saying I made pizza, but I replaced the dough with rice and the toppings with tofu and stir-fried vegetables, but it’s still “pizza.” I made it in the same kitchen, just with most of the ingredients and cooking methods replaced.
By the way, I would never say Latin was “imperfectly transferred to the Gauls”. It sounds patronizing and shows an ignorance of how language aquisition works. To take a similar example, would you say the speech of Swedish-American farmers in Minnesota is still Swedish, just with the vocabulary and grammar replaced by English?
It’s no disrespect to the Gauls or the French to point out that Gaulish is dead, replaced by Latin. I wish it weren’t, but it is.
The Walloons do - most Belgians, however, go ‘negenenzeventig’ to ‘tachtig’, and ‘negenentachtig’ to ‘negentig’
Frequently used, much-liked slang word in England – synonymous with rubbish, tripe, twaddle, nonsense, bunkum, spouting-of-foolish-and-erroneous-stuff. You’re spot-on with the pronunciation.
As a naive kid, I thought that the guy was knowledgeable; but – as mentioned in my post – seems from everything in this thread, that he was misinformed on this point.
Probably far-fetched speculation, about the above fallacy of the revolutionaries’ introducing the vigesimal stuff for the higher numbers: perhaps a bit of dreamt-up propaganda, resulting from left / right political animosities? … rightists attributing to the makers of the Revolution – aside from their real, and deplorable, ugly deeds – a bit of relatively minor, but ridiculous, loony-leftiness in the shape of messing around with an already perfectly good numbering-and-counting system?? (Maybe concurrently with – as you cite – going crazy with making everything else decimal; it’s well-known that things don’t have to be consistent or make sense.)
Of course French descends from Latin, but the question was “when did this change in French”. If the people learning Latin as a second language were vingesimal in their original language and kept that as the language developed into “proto-French”, then it’s not an innovation. It’s inherent from the start in anything you could reasonably call French.
I’m not saying it is, but “Latin is decimal” isn’t evidence against it.
I think you are splitting strange hairs here.
Linguistically, French is the name of a phase of Latin, defined both chronologically and geographically by the presence and absence of characteristically French features. “Latin” is typically shorthand for Classical Latin, also a phase of the larger Latin language, and one which is an antecedent of French. Pretending they are two different languages is silly when we’re talking about the historical development of the language, though it’s quite reasonable in other contexts.
By your definition, the answer to the OP is “they’ve always counted that way. It’s an inherent part of the French language.” Fine. If that’s the case, why mention Gaulish at all? Gaulish was dead long centuries before Old French began, so it cannot have influenced French directly. Gaulish can only have influenced the Vulgar Latin spoken in Gaul, which is not French. Edit: if you do want to talk about the origin of vigesimal counting in the romance languages spoken in what is now France, you do have to talk about Latin, at which point you can talk about how this feature arose in the Vulgar Latin of Gaul but not elsewhere in the Roman Empire.
An off-hand question: If I speak in, say, Paris using those numerical terms what would be the reaction? That’s assuming that my American accent is mild enough to not be laughed at outright.
People would assume you’re Belgian/Swiss? It’s always hard to say what the “average” person knows, but I would guess that most Frenchmen, but not all of them, would know what those words mean.
Someone who actually knows can correct me, but my recollection of my brief stays in Denmark and that in 1970, people over 40 counted to 49 in a more or less normal way (neun og viersg, or 9 and 40) but suddenly 50 was halv tres (meaning halfway through the third, understood to the the third 20) then en og halv tres, do og halv trest, etc., all the way up to tres. Then up to neun og tres and then halv fiers (halfway through the fourth) up to hunderd. People under 40 had learned a new system in which, for example, 55 was femti fem (literally fifty five). I assume that that reform is now complete.
Sorry, this is all a dim memory and I may have most of the names off, but the essential idea is correct. I don’t know about the other Scandinavian countries.