Eli5: why are 11 and 12 called eleven ant twelve and not oneteen and twoteen?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Today, base 10 math is pretty ubiquitous, but math wasn’t always base 10 and wasn’t always so standardized amongst ancient cultures. A lot of ancient people used base twelve, which was seen as better because it divided nicely in 2, 3, 4 and 6, whereas base 10 only divides in 2 and 5. Base 60 was also used sometimes, as evidenced by how hours and seconds, as it divides by 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 15, 20 and 30.

So these special odd numbers are artefacts of these ancient math structures, and different languages, as mentionned by another commentor, have unique names going up to different numbers, e.g. French has special names up to 16. The math changed but people kept the old words because they were used to them.

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