this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
669 points (99.3% liked)

Lemmy Shitpost

31429 readers
4389 users here now

Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.

Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!


Rules:

1. Be Respectful


Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.

Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.

...


2. No Illegal Content


Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.

That means:

-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals

-No CSA content or Revenge Porn

-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)

...


3. No Spam


Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.

-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.

-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.

-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers

-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.

...


4. No Porn/ExplicitContent


-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.

-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.

...


5. No Enciting Harassment,Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts


-Do not Brigade other Communities

-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.

-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.

-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.

...


6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.


-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.

-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.

...

If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.


Also check out:

Partnered Communities:

1.Memes

2.Lemmy Review

3.Mildly Infuriating

4.Lemmy Be Wholesome

5.No Stupid Questions

6.You Should Know

7.Comedy Heaven

8.Credible Defense

9.Ten Forward

10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)


Reach out to

All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
(page 4) 28 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Fun fact, english used to count the same way as german, and it still has the numbers in "reverse" from 13 to 19.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Bit of a sidenote.

Are the English numbers 11-20 influencer by the base 20 system of french back when we had French speaking royalty? And for some reason they're the only unique "digits" for lack of a better term that survived because once we get to twenty it's a pure base 10 system with a consistent pattern throughout.

I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable than me can tell me if my thinking is correct or not.

Edit: thanks for the history lessons, were interesting to read through.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Seems like they're not, although I get your thought process. If we take Old English (which was English before the Norman conquest) and modern Swedish (since Sweden was never conquered by anyone from France or the Romans) as comparisons, we have

Eleven: OE endleofan, Swedish elva Twelve: OE twelf, Swedish tolv Thirteen: OE threotiene, Swedish tretton Fourteen: OE feowertiene, Swedish fjortun

I think you can see the pattern. These actually all have similar common ancestors going into Proto-Germanic, so they're way older than the French influence on English.

Since other Indo-European languages like German and Russian do the same thing as English where the line between "one word numbers" and "two word numbers" is 20 to 21, I suspect that originates waaaaay back in the history of these languages

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

No, 1-12 are influenced by the old base 12 Germanic/Norse system, which is why -teen starts at thirteen, same as in German (11: elf, 12: zwölf, 13: dreizehn, 14: vierzehn & so on)... The -teen for 1x in english is also a carryover from this, being threeten, fourten, fiveten etc. with only numbers over 20 having their orders reversed - German has something similar with "und" only appearing in numbers over 20. English did historically too, eg. "four and twenty blackbirds".

Base 20 was historically used for large numbers though, eg "four score and seven years" by Abraham Lincoln, which was a poetic way of saying 87 inspired from Psalms 90:10, which says "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." in the King James Version, which reflects that using base 20 for large numbers (and not just 80) was not uncommon in the 17th century.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

93= Four score and a baker's dozen.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They must have meant 9*10+2 for most of the countries. For French and Danish you would just remember the word for 90 instead of using logic to get there so they are actually quite 90+2.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (5 children)

So do you mean to suggest "quatre-vingt-dix" just means 90 and doesn't also mean "four-twenty-ten"?

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 month ago (9 children)

I'm German and our way of counting is genuinely stupid. 121 would translate to "onehundred one and twenty". You'd think it's just a matter of practice but errors related to mixing up digits are statistically more common in German speaking regions. Awesome when it comes to stuff like calculating medication dosages and such. Like it's not a huge issue but it's such an unneccessary layer of confusion.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As a non-native working in German, the numbers are one of the trickiest parts.

My jobs generally involve a lot of math and discussions of numbers, and I often struggle with swapping numbers around in my head. Especially because when you get to bigger numbers people often switch between (or use a combination of) listing individual digits left-to-right and saying multi-digit numbers.

The though is when you occasionally notice natives mess it up!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Funny thing: it is the correct way to count like that, also in english. Four-teen, eight-teen etc. They just turn that around beginning with twenty. How obscure is that shit, when you really think about it?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

The older generation in Norway also uses that format. I usually tell them that we aren't under German occupation anymore, so they should use the sensible format.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yes! I'm German and I hate it. It's also very inconvenient when entering numbers into a spreadsheet or something, because you have to know the whole number before you can start typing it.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Its so annoying with phone numbers as well, depending how someone pronounces is. My mom always says phone numbers in 2 digits, like 06 12 34 56 78 (06 twelve fourandthirty sixandfifty eightandseventy) and you just get confused because you want to type in the first number pronounced

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

It just feels weird saying it the other way tho

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Your coloration took an innocent map of Europe and somehow made the thumbnail look dirty. Good job!

[–] [email protected] 119 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (13 children)

Even worse. 90 in old Danish is "halvfemsindstyve" but it is rarely used today. The "sinds" part is derived from "sinde" means multiplied with but it is not in use in Danish anymore. That leaves halvfems, meaning half to the five (which is not used alone anymore) and tyve meaning twenty (as it still does).

We are in current Danish shortening it to halvfems which actually just means "half to the five" in old Danish (2.5) to say 90. 92 is then "tooghalvfems" (two and half to the five, or 2+2.5). The "sindstyve" part (multiplied with 20) fell out of favour.

So we at least have some rules to the madness. Were just not following them at all anymore.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I love how halvfems exists but fems doesn't (and I guess it never did)

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (5 children)

When I'm in Denmark and have to say 92 I just say "kamelåså"

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

(5-0,5)x20 = 4,5x20 = 90? 2+((5-0,5)x20) = 2+(4,5x20) = 2 + 90 = 92?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)
  • Half to the five = (5-0.5) = 4.5
  • "Sindstyve" = multiplied by 20
  • 4.5*20
  • Two and half to the five multiplied by twenty = 2+(5-0.5)*20 = 2+4.5*20 = 2+90 = 92
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago (4 children)

How did you guys even get to this thought process for saying this sort of thing? Why would you work in fractions for whole numbers in language to start? Is this a monarch thing like they fancied themselves a math wizard so they said it like it was a solution on countdown and others mimicked to keep them happy/sound smart themselves?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Little fun-fact: We still have a trace of this left in Norwegian, where the most common way to say "1.5" is not "en og en halv" ("one and a half") but "halvannen" which roughly translates to "half second".

We abandoned the "half third", "half fourth" etc. very long ago (if we ever used them), but "halvannen" just rolls nicely off the tongue.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago (6 children)

The reason is that the Danish numbering system is based on a vigesimal (base-20) system instead of the decimal system. Why is a good question but it might have been influenced by French during a time where numbers from 50-100 is less frequently used, making them prone to complexity. The fractions simply occur since you need at least one half of twenty (10) to make the change from e.g 50 to 60 in a 20-based system.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

ancient danes counted with their toes too lmao

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

That's the technical reason, another reason is that the Danes tried to out-French the French, as they were very hip at the time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

But how did Danish end up like that even though it's quite similar to Germanic languages and obviously neighbouring Germany?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

No idea. We probably had a period where we traded a lot with the French and got influenced by the vigesimal system that way, creating the abomination of a Frankenstein monster we have today.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›