• VonReposti@feddit.dk
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • HorreC@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      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?

      • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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        2 days ago

        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.

        • HorreC@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          why would you avoid the fraction and use it up to 100 then minus 8. I dont have a lot of an issue with it being base 20 but the idea that talking in numbers you have to know fractions for a child is WILD to me. You have to do like a month of understanding math fractions to get how to speak whole numbers.

          • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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            18 hours ago

            We don’t really learn the reason, we just memorise the word for the number. Kinda like you know the word “dog” means a four legged cute creature, but not why the name is “dog”. The old rules are not something we are teached, I just got curious after a confused foreigner made me think about the system for a second :p

        • VaalaVasaVarde@sopuli.xyz
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          1 day 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.

        • EddoWagt@feddit.nl
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          2 days ago

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

          • bstix@feddit.dk
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            1 day ago

            English also has words like dozen (12) and score (20).

            I guess it came from the physical counting in trading. Imagine counting 96 small items. It makes sense to group them into scores and then count the scores. 1 score 2 score 3 score 4 score and a half score. Then there are few remaining that didn’t fit it neatly in scores and then counted last. That’s a total of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 plus the 4 and a half scores.

          • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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            1 day 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.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        24 hours ago

        How

        Why

        Dane here. My guess is utter madness resulting from a history of overdosing on fly agaric filtered through the urine of slaves, followed by a distressingly long period of Catholicism.

        Frankly, it’s a wonder that our ancestors didn’t come up with an even MORE bizarre way of saying numbers and other things!

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          17 hours ago

          Also I’m pretty sure losing folks to stupid wars in England didn’t help, the Great Heathen army and the conquest of England by Sweyn Forkbeard come to mind. No the relative prosperity and peace of Cnut the Great doesn’t make up for the theoretical brain drain.

      • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        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.

        • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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          1 day ago

          We actually still say “halvanden” in Danish too. Everything else is not used (except for halvfems which means 90…)

            • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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              1 day ago

              Halvfjerds for 70 but yes. Firs is 80 though, so that doesn’t make in much easier.

              Fjerde = fourth, fire = four. That makes “half to the fourth” become “halv til fjerde” or “halvfjerds” while “four times twenty” becomes “firsindstyve” and shortened to new Danish “firs”

        • KSP Atlas@sopuli.xyz
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          1 day ago

          In polish, “półtora” means one and a half, it comes from a proto-Slavic word meaning “half-second” for some reason

    • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 day ago

      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

      Did I read that correctly?

        • Match!!@pawb.social
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          1 day ago

          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)

          • tamal3@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Quarter-past the hour, and quarter-till, are still common. Though perhaps less common as we move towards digital clocks.

      • TaTTe@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        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.

        • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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          1 day ago

          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”.

      • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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        1 day ago

        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.

    • Skvlp@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

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

      • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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        2 days ago
        • 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
          • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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            1 day ago

            Yeah, it’s kinda the difference between saying “the clock is currently half past twelve” (the English way) and “the clock is currently half to one” (which we say in Danish and probably in a wealth of non-English languages too).