
Danish numbers - kleptako
http://www.olestig.dk/dansk/numbers.html
======
Bromskloss
[https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/2c/2d/452c2d0569d1015f4a0b2ea27...](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/2c/2d/452c2d0569d1015f4a0b2ea27311e196
--different-languages-learning-french.jpg)

Edit: Now that I think about it, maybe the Swedish 90 (_nittio_) should be
seen as "9×10" (_nio_×_tio_), since that's at least the etymology. I don't
know what to make of the German _-zig_ in _neunzig_. Regarding Japanese, I
dont' speak any. Finally, if you allow yourself to dig deep enough into the
origins of the French and Danish 20 (_vingt_ and _tyve_, respectively), it
appears that they too could be split further as "2×10".

~~~
FullyFunctional
That is a beautifully succinct and funny capture. The French numbers confused
me when I was learning (was it 420107, 42017, 8017, or 97?).

German, being logical and little endian, wins by getting the most significant
part last, about when you finally pay attention :)

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lordnacho
> The "logic" of the system is NOT transparent nor generally known to native
> speakers.

Totally true, you often find people wondering what exactly the pattern is. A
good language teacher will tell you though.

> A Scandinavist language reform movement tried to get the 20-based forms
> replaced by 10-based like Norwegian and Swedish have. With absolutely no
> success.

If this is a real movement, they need better PR. I've never heard anyone make
this case. What's the point anyway?

Interestingly if you look at French, there's a similar thing with the numbers
between French French and Swiss French. Soixante-dix vs septante, and similar
for 80 and 90.

~~~
kristiandupont
>What's the point anyway?

Well it would be easier for learners to pick up for one, but I actually think
the system is annoying, even as a native speaker. When someone tells me a
phone number or similar, I will often ask them to read out the digits one by
one because writing down the numbers can be difficult with the alternating
order.

~~~
lordnacho
That's another weird thing. You CAN read out a number as 8 individual digits,
but most Danes will give you 4 two-digit numbers. It's almost a shibboleth,
like that movie where the non-native German speaker uses his pointing finger
instead of his thumb to count "one".

~~~
Bromskloss
I had a teacher, who, when enumerating, say, three points in his address of
the class, used his thumb all three times.

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wodenokoto
While the numbers have interesting etymological roots, in practice we just
have more "named" numbers than most similar languages. English has special
vocabulary with obvious roots for all tens up to 100 and ordinals are regular
except first, second and third.

In Danish we just have a lot more irregular ordinals. Practically no-one in
Denmark knows about the 20-based number system.

> A Scandinavist language reform movement tried to get the 20-based forms
> replaced by 10-based like Norwegian and Swedish have. With absolutely no
> success.

Danes are unusually stubborn that way.

~~~
Symbiote
I asked a younger Dane how to say "sixtieth" (for example). She couldn't tell
me -- she only know how to say "number sixty". Even the textbook only gave
ordinal numbers up to 31, for giving the date.

Every Dane I've asked just _knows_ the numbers. It's confusing for foreigners,
since many (most?) also know at least two other European languages. When I
hear "tres" I'm thinking "three", and it obviously does mean three. It's
difficult to think "sixty" instead.

~~~
wodenokoto
That's a great anecdote! I don't think I knew how to produce the ordinals
above 39 consistently for most of my life either. And I've probably said
"fyrrende" instead of "fyrretyvende" more than once!

That's the thing about irregular words: if they are rare, native speakers tend
to use the regular form, and in this case we have a peculiar situation where
there is no regular form!

When learning the 10's in Danish, I think it is very important to leave logic
behind and not look for a system. As a kid I had a lot of trouble with 50 and
60 and eventually settled on "the one with "half" is smaller than the one
without" and did the same with 70 and 80.

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chillax
Situation when norwegians visit denmark:
[https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM?t=3m16s](https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM?t=3m16s)

~~~
yagyu
I'd say watching the full 4:17 is worth your time
[https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM](https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM)

Note, this is a parody aired by Norwegian TV, hilarious to anyone who tried
learning Danish at least;)

Edit: on the same theme, how to pronounce any Danish word
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAAkBMeXoAAzpZV?format=jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAAkBMeXoAAzpZV?format=jpg)

~~~
jsolson
This is fantastic. I'm an American who's been learning Danish casually, and as
a native English speaker the pronunciation is... challenging. Even a year or
so in, developing an ear for it is still an ongoing process.

~~~
olq
Learn swedish or norwegian first. Then get drunk and talk while you're eating.
You're now speaking danish

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dsr_
English: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve
thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty: normal
from here on (twenty-five, seventy-three, one million forty-eight thousand
five hundred seventy-six)

Spanish: uno dos tres.... (15) quince, normal from 16 on.

French: normal begins at 17 (dix-sept), but runs into trouble later on
(courtesy of a friend):

70 - soixante-dix, sixty-ten, 80 - quatre-vingts, four-twenties ("score"), and
90 - quatre-vingt-dix, four-twenty-ten.

That makes 99 "quatre-vingt-dix-neuf".

German is the same pattern as English, normal after 20, but prefers the
smaller numbers first.

I have heard that the Russians need to study their conventions intently...

~~~
chr1
Russian numbers are ten based and rather straightforward;

odin dva tri ... desyat (10) odinnadtsat dvenadtsat trinadtsat ... dvadtsat
(20)

there is no irregularity other than 40 which is sorok instead of chetiredesyat

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Foreign learners do not generally find Russian numbers to be
"straightforward". Not only do nouns qualified by numbers take different
numerative cases (the genitive singular for 2–4, the genitive plural for
5–10), but the declension of compound numerals is also surprising for speakers
of many languages.

Compound hundreds are also unpredictable. Yes, historically the varying forms
are clear (the back yer in Common Slavonic _sŭto_ ‘100’ was lost or
strengthened depending on position), but learners today without any background
in the Slavic languages simply need to learn them by rote.

~~~
chr1
True, sound changes like dvesti÷trista÷semsot make learning harder, but i'd
say that's not really the property of the number system but of a language as a
whole, since similar shifts are present in other places too.

For me Russian numbers were simpler than French because you could learn the
basic idea quickly, and then pick up subtle sound shifts by watching
tv/reading.

(disclaimer, i am not a native speaker but learned Russian at school age so
may be misgudging the difficulty of the language)

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drblah
I really wish the danish numbers had been reformed. It is a drag to
communicate numbers verbally and then write them down. It is very prone to
errors since the verbal number sequence is so strange.

Exampel: 54. It is pronounced: fire-og-halv-treds (four-and-half-threes.) As
you might notice, the spoken sequence is backwards compared to the written
number. this gets even more confusing when saying a number above 100. 136 is
et-hundrede-og-seks-og-treidve. (One-hundreds-and-six-and-threes).

~~~
KozmoNau7
Even worse, it's actually four-and-half-three-twenty or in plainer terms four,
plus three and a half twenties.

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partycoder
In English, I've noted people do not like thousands. e.g:

\- 20,000 is 20 k or 20 grand.

\- 1900 is 19 hundreds not 1 thousand 9 hundred.

In Japanese numbers are also different:

\- there's a word for 10,000 (man), therefore 20,000 is not "20 x 1,000" (ni
jyu sen) but rather "2 x 10,000" (ni man).

\- there's a word for 10^8 (oku), making 1 billion = jyu oku (10 * 10^8).

~~~
yuubi
Also, man doesn't work the same way as the lower powers of 10.

The lower powers 10–1000 take a prefix of 2–9 to multiply them, and omitting
the prefix means one.

1 ichi

2 ni

10 juu (not ichi juu)

20 ni juu, literally two ten

100 hyaku

200 ni hyaku

The powers of 10000 seem to take an obligatory prefix 1–9999, formed the usual
way (I've never heard just "man" for 10k, always "ichi man", and 12340000
would be literally translated to "thousand two hundred three ten four ten-
thousand", while none of the smaller powers seem to ever take a prefix > 9.)

The above is based on not living in Japan, though, so the sample of numbers
I've seen might well be missing some things that occur in actual native speech
by someone not teaching a first-year class.

~~~
partycoder
Yes. Every "myriad" (10^4) they have another word. Meaning they have one for
10^4, 10^8, 10^12, 10^16 and so on...
[http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/largenumber.html](http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/largenumber.html)

Largest one I've seen is 10^68.

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bch
Funny skit on Danish language and counting -
[https://youtu.be/8_iixmqSBQw](https://youtu.be/8_iixmqSBQw)

