GollumHow to say the number 92
someguy3Are all German numbers like that?
Only 21-99, after that you say the hundred (thousand, million, etc.) first.
No, it gets more confusing the more numbers you add.
34563
4+30 thousand
+500
3+60
Ow my brain.
You probably did, but then you did the sensible thing and (mostly) changed it around. You can read some 19th century novels and find stuff like âI am two and twenty years oldâ.
Mostly because itâs still the old order for the teens. 1616 could be read as sixteen hundred sixteen, right?
I donât think Iâve seen people read 1616 as sixteen hundred sixteen. You could read 1600 as sixteen hundred, but when there are numbers in the tens and ones spots I donât see anyone using it. The whole thing using sixteen-hundred is weird to me, itâs one thousand six hundred sixteen.
Iâve heard it lots of times (sometimes just as âsixteen sixteenâ) - mostly for years though.
And it seems like Wikipedia agrees:
In American usage, four-digit numbers are often named using multiples of âhundredâ and combined with tens and ones: âeleven hundred threeâ, âtwelve hundred twenty-fiveâ, âforty-seven hundred forty-twoâ, or âninety-nine hundred ninety-nineâ.
Hmm is that actual English usage or an author thinking in German and translating badly (there were lots of German immigrants to North America).
I donât think e.g. Jane Austen was German.
ValiantDustOr ShakespeareâŠ
Thy Fifty Yet Doth Double Five and Twenty.
And thatâs because the numbers we use today where originally brought to Europe by Arabs. Arabic is read right to left. So having reading numbers that way used to be the âcorrectâ way in lots of languages. German is just one of the few ones that stuck with it.
People only borrowed the symbols for numbers from Arabic, not the actual concept of numbers themselves.
theodewereyou're correct, but it may seem antiquated to some.. the full "old" way to say it was 16 hundreds and 16..
when i read 1,500, it's about 50/50 that it's one thousand five hundred, or fifteen hundred
I think they used to do it in English as well. For example I remember Jane Austen using both twenty-one and one-and-twenty. So Iâm guessing it used to be the same as in German, then for some time you could use both and now one-and-twenty is not used anymore.
ZyratoxxYes, Germans say numbers like that. (It only applies to the tens tho)
Roughly translated youâd say two-and-ninety (without the minus, I just made those so it doesnât look that cursed)
Itâs mainly because at least in German it flows better than ninety two would. There have been pushes to accept ninety two as well but acceptance has been and continues to be scarce.
JummitMan Iâd love for that to catch on, mostly so itâs easier to learn. Kids get confused by the order all the time.
Definitely. Up until now I always dictate phone numbers with digits as pairs: like âneun, zweiâ instead of âzweiundneunzigâ
aardMy kids grow up with multiple languages. I told my daughter early on not to bother with German numbers larger than 20, and to select a different language to do math in her head.
For a few years she was just saying larger German numbers like 9-2, or was writing them down, though now at 7 she seems to get better at converting them correctly.
federalreverse-old(It only applies to the tens tho)
Tens, but also ten-thousands, ten-millions, ten-billions ⊠you get the gist.
cally [he/they]some (very few, i think itâs only the âteensâ) english numbers are like that, like seventeen (7+10) for example
Kind of. Those are distinct names rather than seven+ten. It took a long time until I even made that connection.
smikYes, and itâs so annoying. Iâm Austrian, a bit dyslexic, and sometime I just canât sevenandeighty sixandseventy.
ChaoticNeutralCzechOf course, why would 92 be an exception? (Only numbers with a thousand-group ending in 21-99 do that, though)
See French going nuts for 92.
Well, they also follow their own weird rules, 92 uses the same system as 91 or 93.