493
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Dutch also has that problem, it causes so many errors.

Old English used to have the same problem ( https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_English/Numbers ), but at one point they must have seen the light, probably some time after they were conquered by the french in 1066. I do remember reading a Charles Dickens story where a person said a number with tens and ones in the reverse order and I wonder when it finally died out completely in English (if it ever did, maybe it's still in use in some dialects).

Edit: thirteen, fourteen, ... There's still commonly used remnants of this reverse order in English, we'll never get rid of this insanity :)

this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
493 points (94.6% liked)

Funny: Home of the Haha

5399 readers
1499 users here now

Welcome to /c/funny, a place for all your humorous and amusing content.

Looking for mods! Send an application to Stamets!

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.


Other Communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS