Creazlequatre-vingts
Pasta DentalThe other day I decided I would stop saying quatre-vingt-dix (4, 20, 10 = 90) instead I would say huit-dix-dix (8, 10, 10) or even deux-quarante-dix (2, 40, 10) and shit like that
to add some context i forgot about it an hour after
wildbus8979Why not use the existing septante, octante, neunante?
idk i was tired and i tought it was the funniest thing
confirming it’s funny
I’d actually be down for huitante, in ordre to keep the latin root like other numbers instead of the greek one
Neunante always struck me as a bit weird (although much better than the math thingy).
Neuvante would seem a more reasonable derivation from neuf.
Would also make it closer to other latin languages like Italian and Spanish.
Ask the guys in Modern times who decided that fick it we will go for the nonsensical method.
Depends where though, Belgium and Swiss use septante…
Yes, they are the sensible players in this game
People are actually using huitante and not octante.
Regions use septante, huitante and neunante outside France and especially in Switzerland.
Mossy Feathers (She/Her)I had to look this up. What the fuck? They came up with numbers up to 60 and then just said “eh, fuck it” and made 70 “sixty-ten”, 80 “four-twenties” and 90 “four twenties ten”.
Fried_out_KombiIn Switzerland, they use septante, huitante, and nonante for 70, 80, and 90, respectively. Much more sensical, imo.
In Belgium, they use “septante” and “nonante” too.
80 is still “quatre-vingt”.
AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦Swiss French is what French should have always been imo
Should a language be something else that the product of what those speaking make of it? :)
For any other language? The people who soeak it decide.
For specifically French? They decided 90 should be “four times twenty and ten” and thereby forfeited their linguistic rights.
Funny you say that, the French are I believe the only nation to have come up with an institution specifically tasked with regulating the French language : l'Académie Française.
They have been around for almost 400 years, are rife with corruption, have produced a new version of the "official" dictionary every 50 years on average (and it's not even a good one), a single grammar book that was so bad and full of ridiculous mistakes that the linguist community have been laughting at them continuously since then, and of the 40 members (for life) none has been a linguist since 1903. And although their enormous wealth has been subsidised by the taxpayers since its creation, the French governement has waited until 2015 to FINALLY require them to submit their accounting to the State accounting supervisor.
So you are very right, the French have foreited their linguistic rights indeed...
We’re not that different with the teens. We effectively say “seven ten”, “eight ten”, “nine ten”. You don’t think of nineteen as “nine+ten”, it’s just its own number. Well, the French take that one step farther.
Maybe it’s the anglophone in me, but going 1 - 10 then 11,12 (3+10) - (9+10) then adopting a repeating pattern to infinity is more explainable than going 1-10 then 11-15 then a regular pattern for fifty numbers then getting freaky with that pattern up to 100, then keep that pattern until one thousand, then just repeat that pattern til infinity.
The other way around. We started with base 20 everywhere then simplified some of it.
During medieval times it used to be :
10 Dix (10)
20 Vingt (20)
30 Vingt et dix (20+10)
40 Deux-vingt (2x20)
50 Deux-vingt et dix (2x20+10)
60 Trois-vingt (3x20)
70 Trois-vingt et dix (3x20+10)
80 Quatre-vingt (4x20)
90 Quatre-vingt et dix (4x20+10)
Then they switched to base 10... But only up to 70 for some reasons in France. Belgium and Switzerland (and some parts of France) have gone all the way to 100 by using Septante (70), Octante or Huitante (80) and Nonante (90).
Belgians and Swiss being the premium version of France, once again.
What a nice thing to say
The French earned it by continuing to use quatrevingt.
Wow, wait ! stop ! I can’t handle all this niceness !
And YOU KNOW WHAT?
Waffles > Crepes
WELL Quatre-quarts > Waffles
HAH
I think it was around that time in my French class, with my teacher just without any comment expecting us to take that seriously, that I decided that’s not a language I wanted to deal with.
With the exception of Eleven and Twelve, English is actually pretty good at this.
English: What's that?
German: "Was ist das?"
Dutch: "Wat is dat?"
Spanish: ¿Qué es eso?
French: "qu'est-ce-que c'est ?"
What. the fuck?!
Jean-Mich MuchAgree. But you can say “C’est quoi ?” too. More “street language” but it’s okay
investorsexchange«Qu’est-ce que c’est que ce bordel ?»
Hahaha
“C’est quoi cette merde ?”
A_AFrench-Québec : “Kossé ça?”
I ended up replying to the original comment, but your translation to English made me realize that in Portuguese we commonly say “O que que é isso?” which is basically “qu’est-ce-que c’est?”
Although most French say "Qu'est-ce que c'est", it is worthy to note that the proper/formal French is "Qu'est-ce?". So strictly equivalent to "What is that", word for word. :)
ZagorathThen ask someone who hasn’t learnt French how many syllables there are in “qu’est-ce que c’est ?” And watch the look of horror on their face when you tell them it’s just 3.
In Portuguese we actually can say “O que é isso?”, basically the same as in Spanish, but I’d say I use more commonly “O que que é isso?”, which seems closer to French version. Funny, had never thought about it like that.
Portuguese is what happens when a Spaniard speaks French while hungover
And the French is pronounced keskecè. Half the letters are silent
Username… Four Twenties Ten Nine, Hundred
999? 199? What?
he meant 99, the French read it as 4x20+10+9
Wait until you hear what the Danes do.
Why is “97” “7 + [-½+5] x 20” in Danish?
No kidding. It’s the sort of thing that makes you think about how different people process info differently
Normal children usually gain fluency in their native language by age 5. Danish children need to wait until age 7.
TIL that there’s actually (kinda but not really) a method to the madness that is our numbers 😄
HolyhandgrenadeIt’s kind of funny how aware Danes are of their weird numbers system. I speak Norwegian and whenever I’m in Denmark they use the more sensible Norwegian number system to explain to me the prices of stuff (probably because I give them the deer in the headlights-stare whenever I hear something like “fem og halvfjerds”).
They think we’re stupid and infantile for evolving past tradition.
v_krishnaI’m otherwise decently fluent in Danish (first learned nynorsk then lived in Denmark for a few years). But when numbers come out I immediately switch back to Norwegian. Fucking Danes.
Thanks for the link! While I was aware of the weird numbers in Danish, this gave a great explanation and I wish I had had this info when I was forced to learn French in school. The way this vigntisian system evolved is actually quite interesting and makes so much sense. Everything makes sense now. Wow.
Deutsch: 2andThirty
Dickensian English: in the year eighteen hundred four-and-thirty
Much more regular than English where you have seven-teen but then seventy-one. To be consistent you’d need to switch to either teen-seven or one-seventy.
I’m okay with saying seven, ten-seven, twenty-seven, etc…
BlyfhI think this actually roots in the problems of conversion to base ten from base twelve. Not sure though, maybe I remembered this wrong.
Being lazy and not going to look it up. I can’t help it to wonder if it’s also based in Sumerian’s base 60
It's base 20.
80 in French is 4 x 20. A long time ago, 60 was "trois-vingt", 3 x 20. We still have a hospital in Paris called "Hopital des Quinze-Vingts", 15 x 20 because it used to have 300 beds.
Oh, neat! Thanks for clearing this up.
Meanwhile all french speakers understand each other perfectly well.
So you mistake people saying ninety-nine (99) for them saying ninety nine (90, 9)? No? How come? It’s the same thing!
Right, but the tens numeral and the ones numeral being separate words that you add makes more sense than occasionally throwing a curveball like 20×4+5