Sixty-ten-eight! Sixty-ten-nine! Four-twenties!

1999 == One thousand, nine hundreds, four twenties, ten, nine.

I studied French in grade school over ten years and I love it. But the way numbers convert into language is wild. I tease it with love.

Pooge 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Switzerland and Belgium got them right!

	▲	rkomorn 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		As a French person who grew up going to a school in Belgium for a bit as a kid, I was quite amused by their numbers. My thought as a 6 year old was "aw, are soixante-dix, quatre-vingt, and quatre-vingt-dix too complicated for you?" Even now, while I think the French numbers make objectively no sense (even the countries that do count in 20s are at least more consistent than us), I can't help but find the Swiss and Belgian numbers "cute". Like "Baby's first 70 to 99". And for whatever reason, I don't have the same opinion about 70-99 in English, Portuguese or Spanish. Edit: just to be clear, I think my thoughts about it are absurd but they're too deeply engrained and decades old to shed completely.

Cosi1125 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Sixty-ten-eight! Sixty-ten-nine! Four-twenties!

fajitaforce5 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

US time: a quarter till 8.

	▲	layer8 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		= 775¢

cperciva 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Four twenties and ten" is better than the Danish "five minus a half, times twenty".

	▲	rkomorn 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		But the history of why we stuck to four-twenties sort of makes it worse. We were allegedly headed to sanity but l'Academie was like "actually let's stick to soixante-dix, quatre-vingt, and quatre-vingt-dix".
	▲	card_zero 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Good grief, it gets worse. It's half third [ordinal] times twenty, ½ #3 × 20.
	▲	Waterluvian 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That is so cursed. I love it!

9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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