For example, some languages follow the same rule regardless if its in 10s or 20s:
Japanese | Chinese |
Juu-ni | Shi er | twelve
Ni-juu-ni | Er shi er | twenty two
But other languages such as:
English | French | Romanian | Icelandic | German | Philipino |
Twelve | douze | doisprezece (two towards ten wtf) | tólf | zwölf | labindalawa
Twenty two | vingt-deux | Douăzeci și doi (two tens and two) | tuttugu og tveir | zweiundzwanzig (two and twenty) | dalawampu’t dalawa
Initially I thought it was an european thing but not even koreans do it like japanese or chinese people, so why is that?
In: 38
It’s a relic of older number systems.
Today, most people tend to think of all number systems as base-10; but that’s not the case. French counting is still practically in base-20; while English has a lot of relics of a base-12 system (including the counting units “dozen” and “Gross”, for 12 and 12*12). On the other hand, Chinese and Japanese have always been base-10; so they don’t have the same relic-words from an older number system.
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