I’ve always wondered why the numbers “one” through “ten” in the English language are all 1 syllable, but “seven” is the only one with 2 syllables. Not sure if this is just random and I notice things like that, or if there is actually a reason behind it.
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Just a coincidence. All lower numbers in English go back to a Proto-Germanic root, which itself goes back to Proto-Indo-European.
This ‘Proto-Indo-European’ is an ancient language which is the ‘ancestor’ of most European and some Asian languages. It existed long before we had writing, so we only ‘know’ this language through reconstruction based on its descendants. So there’s no further explanation for the origin of these words, they just mean what they mean.
Here are the numbers in English -> Proto-Germanic -> Proto-Indo-European:
One -> **aina-* -> **oi-nos*
Two -> **twai* -> **duoh*
Three -> **þri-* -> **trei-es*
Four -> **fedwōr* -> **kwétuor-es*
Five -> **fimf* -> **pénkwe*
Six -> **sehs-* -> **s(u)eks*
Seven -> **sebun* -> **septm*
Eight -> **ahtau* -> **h3ekteh3(u)-*
Nine -> **newun* -> **h1n(é)un-*
Ten -> **tehun -> *dékmt*
.
So most numbers did in fact have 2 syllables a long time ago; they just happened to be shortened in English. For instance, the vowel ‘u’ in PIE ‘duoh’ changed to the consonant ‘w’ in Germanic ‘twai’, because they just sound similar.
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(Edit: note that the PIE notation is not quite what it should be. I had to edit the strange symbols out because Reddit is garbage and gets worse with every update.)
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