Sunday, September 20, 2015

Très Childish

french numbers get silly up towards the top

12 comments:

  1. If you think French is bad, meet Danish:

    http://satwcomic.com/just-a-number

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    1. I know, right? Also, Malachi, you already complained about French numbers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but that's OK. :-)

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    2. I figured it was funny enough to complain about twice! ^_^

      And "halvfjerdsindstyvende" sounds like the name of some Lovecraftian beast out of hell

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  2. Vigesimal (ie. using multiples of 20 as base number) numeral systems are pretty common in the Celtic languages too, at least in the traditional numeral systems which are even more extensive than in French. Danish has a similar numeral system.

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  3. I propose we switch all languages to binary counting, after all we are living in the age of computers!

    There 10 types of people: Those who understand binary and those who don't.

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  4. I lived in Switzerland for a time and was very much relived to find that Swiss French uses a real decimal numbering system. Septante, octante and nonante, as one might expect. Malachi, I prefer your reaction of humor; when I was learning French I threw a tantrum when I got to 70!

    http://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-french-switzerland/en/fra-che/

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    1. Bless the Swiss, may their numerals continue to be decimal-based and their fondues continue to be pungent and tasty.

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  5. Lol, that reminds me of the time my dad was taking French classes and one day came home laughing. As the class struggled to comprehend the strange french number system the teacher complained that the Belgians were crazy as they used septante, octante and neufante - which the teacher thought was "tre complicated!"

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  6. Don't be ridiculous. It's sixty AND eleven!

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  7. If you have not seen this numberphile video, it has a good explanation of the linguistics of different languages concerning numbers.
    58 and other Confusing Numbers - Numberphile
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4bmZ1gRqCc

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