How to say the number 92

Now imagine moving there as a foreigner from a normal country and someone telling you their phone number! It's like having a micro stroke.

1.5 is "half second", 2.5 is "half third", 4.5 is "half fifth"

Interesting. Regionally, some Germans measure time like this, i.e. "half two" is 01:30 resp. 13:30. (Which is different from English, where people who say "half two" mean "half past two".)

We've since made the "times twenty" implicit for maximum confusion, so it's just said as "two and half fifths".

I know very little about Danish, but I learned that Danes slur the middle of most words. So I suspect you actually pronounce even less of the word than you'd write..?

Because language is stubborn.

Belgian French gives me hope.

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[Edited: Usage is not regional]

So the Danish can do this bullshit with everyday numbers and it’s cool because language , but I mention that it’s 70 degrees outside and everyone starts arguing about metric?

Everything is arbitrary, I’m gonna go build a dresser in multiples of rabbit foot while you all figure something out.

And to confuse even further, the cardinal number (ninety-two) is "to-og-halv-fems" in Danish without the *20. But if you need the ordinal number (92nd), then we add in the x20 as in "to-og-halv-fem-sinds-tyvende". Danish is very easy and transparent 😊

I like our weird numbers tho 🥰

And yall give us shit about using imperial measurements

I have to admit, as a French myself I found relief in that discovery. And thank you very much for the explanation.

I was confused by the "2 and" at first, then I realize you put the smallest part of the whole number first. It makes perfectly sense if you count in base 20.

We also have an habit to count in base 12 and half 12 in France. Like "half a dozen" (6) or "one dozen and half" (18), but only for multiple of 6.

I will now say "quatre vingtaine et demie" instead of "quatre-vingt-dix" just to tease my fellow Belgians (who say "nonante" and "septante" instead of "soixante-dix" et "quatre-vingt-dix")

EDIT: As a matter of fact, I will rather say "trois et demi-cinquième vingt" for 73 because it sounds better. Now I see it.

If I am correct, the 3rd 20 is everything between 60 and 79. The half-3rd 20 is everything between 70 and 79. So 7 and half-2nd 20 would be 37?

How would you say 40, 60 and 80 then ? 2nd 20, 3rd 20 and 4th 20?

30 (tredive) you cited seems to be the exception, as it's not “halbtots” or something.

I've always found the Danish numbers intriguing. I understand the whole "halvfem-sinds-tyve"- thing and the other ones of similar origin but I can't wrap my head around "elleve" and "tolv". Do you remember the origin of those?

TIL that it not French with the weirdest way to count. I still don't really get the Danish way. Even with your explanation.

Funny enough, I grew up saying "quarter of eight" to mean 19:45. It took until my mid-20s to realize its probably a regional thing because, after I left Philadelphia (my home city) and moved to Chicago, everyone thought I meant 20:15.

We also do this in germany

Thats pretty common in terms of time. I'm not going to say something is "half five" to say it coststwo and a half dollars though. I understand that with French and Danish you arent actually doing the math and just think of that string the same way i think of "ninety two" but it's still difficult to wrap my head around.

So to say 102 in French, you'd say four-times-twenty-plus-twenty-two.

I don't believe you.

EDIT: What in the actual fuck. You were right. 😳

In Belgium, it's Septante, Huitante, and Nonante.

In spanish is also 90 + 2

Seriously, french counting from 20 to 99 is fucked up seven ways sideways.. what were they thinking

Yes, absolutely! My work is related to monasteries. Some of these institutions were large economical organisations with hundreds or thousands of affiliated workers (in addition to the few dozens of actual clergy) stretching hundreds of villages/cities. Monastaries basically were the major corporations of the time. They did handle these amounts of money regularly.

Historical purchasing power for anything before the industrial revolution is hard to approximate. On the one hand because wages were not only payed in money, on the other hand because labor was very cheap and material cost was high - the inverse of today. To illustrate: They did lots of recycling work that would seem fanatical to us today, e.g. straightening old nails, reusing stones and wood from deconstructions, or even excavating and resharpening rotten fenceposts. To add some general and very rough perspective: An unskilled worker/day-worker could expect a yearly wage in the order of magnitude of about 5 fl (guilders) per year for very hard work and long working hours for 6 or 7 days a week (payed daily in non-face-value coins like pennies). However, it was common for wages to include living accomodation and/or food staples (that included wine or beer) - or pay out the worth of these things, separately. A pair of shoes was a valued gift one could give to an unskilled worker on special occasions.

It was a different time with different societal and economical systems in place. Estimated simplifications you might read online (e.g. 1 fl = 50€) are therefor to be taken with a buttload of salt - to the point one might call it a misrepresentation. Then there were the multiple events with increased silver and gold imports from the new world (combined with some greedy/desperate lords reducing the silver share of their coins). This led to multiple changes in the exchange rates between various regional gold, silver and non-face-value coins of the same names, complicating thing even more.

To solve these issues, the prices I named above would be in fictional coins of account, not actual physical coins that were payed. People had to do quite some math when doing accounting - and yes, minor errors happened all the time.

It's a pretty enormous amount of money now. I was thinking that a gold coin was 1oz which would have been an insane amount of money but some research has told me that guilder can refer to several different coins that are between .08oz and .11oz of gold mixed with other precious metals. Ignoring the other precious metals and assuming the lowest gold content 1457.5 guilders is a bit over 116 oz of gold. Gold is approx. $1900/oz so in gold alone that is over $220,000.

But continues after that. Apart from 11 and 12 the german system is consistent within itself, even if the system itself is kinda weird, English less so.

Edit: What i meant is the difference between ten/teen, whereas German uses zehn ("ten") to build the "compount numbers". There is also thir-teen as opposed to three-ten, which isn't quite what eleven and twelve are, but it's also not the same as the numbers following it. But others have pointed out that these are pretty marginal differences and i would agree.

Japanese is 1 (ichi), 2 (ni), ...,10 (juu), 10+1 (juu-ichi), 10+2 (juu-ni), ..., 21 (ni-juu-ichi)..., 92 (kyu-juu-ni)..., 100 (hyaku)

TIL a little about Swedish.

I wonder if Swedish and English number words share a history, because I can imagine it started as "three ten" which gets crunched to "thr-t'n" and then properified into "thirteen."

The more formal way of writing it (one thousand, two hundred and sixteen) is definitely more clear. But if it helps to remember the more colloquial way (twelve hundred): twelve hundred is a 12 followed by 2 zeros, just like one hundred is a 1 followed by 2 zeros.

Flight school beat "twelve hundred" out of me.

TIL, then our number system is perfect!! :D

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I think that's fairly normal in Europe, isn't it? In Germany we have Million, Milliarde, Billion, Billiarde instead of million, billion, trillion and so on, too.

I might be remembering this incorrectly, but a billion in Europe used to be a million million, and we would count in thousands of millions first, as opposed to a billion now being a thousand million.

I can't remember whether a trillion was a million (old) billion, or whether it was a billion billion.

Yes, but in Basque.

Which is why it doesn't make sense that it's colored green

It's a quatre vingt doozy!

What's the Swiss French word for 90?

Edit nevermind it's further down the thread. Septante, huitante, and nonante.

Francophone Belgium is mostly in the south east - it is shaded green on the map & the Flemish area is the yellow bit above.

What are you even talking about? You aren't responding to the OP in any meaningful capacity.

Ow my brain.

Also funny because I had assumed English got the numbering system from German.

Man I'd love for that to catch on, mostly so it's easier to learn. Kids get confused by the order all the time. It's even shorter in some cases.

Also, the reverse order makes dictating phone numbers such a pain.

(It only applies to the tens tho)

Tens, but also ten-thousands, ten-millions, ten-billions ... you get the gist.

Kind of. Those are distinct names rather than seven+ten. It took a long time until I even made that connection that teen probably came from ten.

See French going nuts for 92.

I guess the telephone just didn't arrive properly in German speaking countries, at least we will soon get rid of most fax machines, hopefully that is...

I'm 40. Not old damnit

Point is it is used and understood :)

Yes, it seems like 9×10+2

The wrong language in the picture is Russian. Because the Russian word for ninety is an exception and doesn't follow the same rule as 80, 70, etc.

You are neither wrong nor right here. Yes the Russian word for 90 does not follow the rule as with 80, 70 and so on. It still is a specific word for 90, it just doesn't follow the same rule as with previous ones. So when saying 92, you still pronounce 90+2.

It is a whole messed up thing with numbers in Russian as there are multiple exceptions, another one being for 500, it just does not follow the same rule.

Well, no, in english ninety means 90. You don't say nine-ten. Most probably it started off as nine-ten, but by now it is it's own distict sound as someone else under this post commented.

Same in Czech, but the two-and-ninety is not much used.