Yeah, the joke is that they're stupid. Ha ha, very funny. But did you know that in Belgium and Switzerland there are actually individual words for 70, 80, and 90? Respectively, they're 'septante', 'huitante', and 'nonante'. Don't use them in France though, people will try to correct you. On the topic of 80, it actually used to be far more consistent. Some time, possibly around the Middle Ages, [I mean, it has Celtic origin, what do you want me to say?] any multiple of twenty up to 18 could be expressed as 'x twenties'. This led to a hospital intended for 300 knights to be called the 'Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts', literally translated as 'hospital of fifteen twenties'. Arguably more confusing is the Danish word for fifty; 'halvtreds'. Seemingly, this means 'half-three' but that doesn't make a lot of sense. So what's going on? Okay, well, this is actually a shortening of the older Danish word, 'halvtredsindstyve', which roughly translates to 'half three times twenty'. But... doing the math, that equals thirty. There's one more trick here. Since 'half' comes before 'three', it really means 'one half before three', or 'three minus one half'. Essentially, it's the same as the mathematical expression, '(3 - 1/2) * 20 = 50'. Which is true, but surely that's quite long-winded, right? If it helps, Old Danish used the vigesimal system, or base 20. That might explain the weird multiplication a bit. If it's any consolation, other number systems, like those used in Tongua or Lojban just have you say the digits in order. So '4034' in Lojban is just 'vonocivo'. I'll leave it here with another common joke: 42 in Lojban.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-4751,00.html
https://www.thelocal.fr/galleries/culture/french-words-you-will-never-hear-in-france/
https://www.wordsense.eu/halvtredsindstyve/
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B4pital_des_Quinze-Vingts
https://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-danish/en/dan/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4bmZ1gRqCc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-unefmAo9k
No comments:
Post a Comment