this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Ehh, i'm not giving France a pass either.
The answer to 100 - 8 should not be four twenties and a twelve. We're counting, not making change.
French counting is bunk. Way, Way, better then Denmark though apparently
The map is wrong, Czechs can do both 2+90 and 90+2, I am not sure if it's regional within the country, or depends on the context, but they definitely use both versions
Ugh okay here's another "Danes shouldn't be allowed to make number stuff":
The time 15:25 is "five minutes before half 4"
"Fem minutter i halv fire"
So you round up to 16 before even halfway, what!?
That makes perfect sense to me though. In Swedish we'd say fem i halv fyra. Five minutes to half four.
But in English half four would be short for half past four. I guess.
Counting like the Danish, however, that is an abomination.
What's wrong with "25 over 3?" I see the need for half 4 by itself but things being relative to that is so weird to me
Well, it's interesting because that would be the case with 15:20. That'd be tjugo över tre (twenty past three). But specifically 15:25 would be fem i halv fyra (five to half four). 15:35 is fem över halv fyra (five past half four).
And then 15:40 is tjugo i fyra (twenty to four).
So :25 and :35 are weird edge cases.
Same in Dutch,
"Vijf voor half vier"
shakes fist THE DANES!
For a real explanation of this watch this illuminating video.
TL;DW According to the perons, it's based on counting sheep and from base 20. 1 score = 20 sheep. 2 score = 40 sheep.
To get to 50, you have 2.5 score, but they don't say "two and a half". They are quite Germanic and say "halfway to 3" (Germans do this too). So, 50 = half three score.
The video also points out that English has (as the hodgepodge of a language it is) yet another remnant of Germanic languages: 13-19 are not "te(e)n-three to te(e)n-nine", but "three-te(e)n to nine-te(e)n", just like in German "drei-zehn bis neun-zehn".
It's quite easy to mock other languages, but there's always a reason for why things are the way they are. Think of Chesterton's fence.
but there’s always a reason
By and large, there's a reason for everything, but it's just not always a good reason.
If I have 100 rocks and take away 8, the answer to how many rocks I Have should not require a math problem. We're counting, not making change. If your counting system isn't decimal-based, you're no better off than the US using imperial measurements.
there's always a reason for why things are the way they are
Of course, no one is saying that the Danes were so drunk that they simply wanted to make their numbering so much different than everyone else. The problem is that they don't want to change it, probably because "it has always been this way" or something.
Even Norwegian, which was historically more like Danish, changed to using "normal" counting in the 1950s. So it can be done, but Danes seemingly don't want to change, despite the fact it makes their language harder to learn/use.
It's a shame that, when Norwegians changed their counting system, the suggestion of using "to-ti" didn't catch on for 20. It would be analogous to saying "twoty" in English.
I agree with your broader point about linguistics, but Chesterton's fence has never sat right with me. Consider the inverse:
This annoying and unnecessary fence is an inconvenience, but since nobody can remember what it's for, we dare not remove it
Chesterton's fence is a warning not to commit this logical error: I don't know what this fence is for, therefore I know there is no reason for it.
It doesn't say never to remove it. It means you should try and figure out why it's there and ask around before removing it.
It's just a logic exercise that advicates forethought when enacting change. The bigger problem is people taking parables and thought experiments as gospel, faithfully adhering to the text without considering it's intent.
More people need to read Asimov's Foundation
I honestly don't understand what's insightful about it. It encourages a functional viewpoint that results in you inventing proposed uses for something that is a vestige of an inefficiency. Justifying something useless isn't curiosity, it's just masturbation. You should identify how a structure interacts with it's current environment. There's a reason functionalism is considered worthless in sociology.
There's also a reason for imperial measurements, but it's still a worse system than metric.
What's your suggestion for a change to the Danish counting system? Do you think it is as obvious as going from imperial to metric?
Yes.
Stop being weird, Danes, literally everyone else figured it out.
It'S tHeiR gErmaN hEriTaGe
If the Frisians can figure out how not to be a bunch of weird number freaks while running around on clogs on their dikes and being half fucked up French the Danes have no excuse.
Norway used to count like the Germans, but switched after the introduction of the telephone. There were simply too many mistakes when telling the numbers to the operators, that a change was mandated.
Old people might still use the 2+90 variant though, but it is not very common.
So now you're calling me old? THE NERVE!
And the French way isn't rotten? Lmao
It's bad, but not danish bad
French is pretty stupid too. Smart Belgium with french as national tongue only changed that number aberration: They use the made-up word "octante" for eighty and "nonante" for ninety, instead of "quatre-ving" (four-twenty) or "quatre vingt dix" (four-twenty , ten) in proper french
Dunno, I prefer french to spanish tbh. Maybe its because basque is like French.
What if I told you that all words are made up?
In Belgium we use nonante, not octante, that is, iirc only used in Switzerland. That means we at least don’t use quatre-vingt onze etc.
Fun fact, english used to count the same way as german, and it still has the numbers in "reverse" from 13 to 19.
Eleven and twelve kinda are as well. They literally mean "one left" (ain-lif) and "two left" (twa-lif) with the "over ten" being implied.
I’m 43 years old and this is the first time I’ve seen an explanation of these numbers. Thank you!
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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.
Sorry to ping you a bunch with replies. I'm curious now, do you have unique numeral symbols for the numbers after 9?
No, we use the same numeral symbols as everyone else. We just pronounce it in the most unintuitive manner possible.
I can imagine that we once had symbols representing the base 20 system but standardised at some point to decimal symbols. I though haven't encountered any piece of history to back that up.
This is making my brain hurt. I need to try reading a few more times but, if I am understanding it correctly, the old Danish way of saying it is mathematically incorrect?
Half-to-five == 2.5
2.5*20 == 50
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Did I read that correctly?
I think it means half less than 5, or 4.5
Maybe you'd say "half until 5" in english
for no particular reason, in English, 5:30 can be said as "half past 5" but never "half until 6". (but "five thirty" is still more common)
I'm not Danish, but I think he meant 4.5 instead of 2.5. It's like halfway from 4 to 5, not from 0 to 5.
A similar word exists in Finnish too, when going from 1 to 2: "puolitoista" translates to "half second", like halfway to the second number, and is commonly used to refer to 1.5, BUT without any multiplication shenanigans.
Correct.
- Half to the second (halvanden, still in use today) = 1.5
- Half to the third (halvtredje) = 2.5
- Half to the fourth (halvfjerde) = 3.5
- Half to the fifth (halvfemte) = 4.5
And so on. You might notice that I sometimes write it like "halvfemte" and other times "halvfems". The latter is just the way it was spelled when used in a combined word (another fun quirk in Danish that we inherited from Germanic this time!). 90 is today spelled just "halvfems".
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