• Corndog@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    As much as I love shitting on the French for being terrible with numbers (seriously, how the fuck is the word for ‘99’ ‘four-twenties, a ten, and a nine’?!?) this one seems intentional so you can feel when you run out.

    • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      The funny thing is that in Switzerland they commonly say nonante neuf. So it’s not like there is no word for 90

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Because way back when, before sensible systems, they used base-20, and despite now running base-10, the base-20 is stuck in the language.

      Edit it’s sort of in most languages actually, not just to that extent. I mean, English has “twenty-one”, but no “onety-one”. 1-20 have their own numbers in most languages I think, and after twenty you just repeat the first 10 and add whatever tens you like, whereas the French sometimes repeat the first 20 and add an amount of twenties