5 ms·

Danish numbers

67 points by kleptako 9y ago

wodenokoto 9y ago
While the numbers have interesting etymological roots, in practice we just have more "named" numbers than most similar languages. English has special vocabulary with obvious roots for all tens up to 100 and ordinals are regular except first, second and third. In Danish we just have a lot more irregular ordinals. Practically no-one in Denmark knows about the 20-based number system. > A Scandinavist language reform movement tried to get the 20-based forms replaced by 10-based like Norwegian and Swedish have. With absolutely no success. Danes are unusually stubborn that way.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  I asked a younger Dane how to say "sixtieth" (for example). She couldn't tell me -- she only know how to say "number sixty". Even the textbook only gave ordinal numbers up to 31, for giving the date. Every Dane I've asked just knows the numbers. It's confusing for foreigners, since many (most?) also know at least two other European languages. When I hear "tres" I'm thinking "three", and it obviously does mean three. It's difficult to think "sixty" instead.
  - wodenokoto 9y ago
    That's a great anecdote! I don't think I knew how to produce the ordinals above 39 consistently for most of my life either. And I've probably said "fyrrende" instead of "fyrretyvende" more than once! That's the thing about irregular words: if they are rare, native speakers tend to use the regular form, and in this case we have a peculiar situation where there is no regular form! When learning the 10's in Danish, I think it is very important to leave logic behind and not look for a system. As a kid I had a lot of trouble with 50 and 60 and eventually settled on "the one with "half" is smaller than the one without" and did the same with 70 and 80.
chillax 9y ago
Situation when norwegians visit denmark: https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM?t=3m16s https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM?t=3m16s
- amarant 9y ago
  Hehe Norwegians going to Denmark reads like a setup for a classic joke, to a Swede anyway
- yagyu 9y ago
  I'd say watching the full 4:17 is worth your time https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM Note, this is a parody aired by Norwegian TV, hilarious to anyone who tried learning Danish at least;) Edit: on the same theme, how to pronounce any Danish word https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAAkBMeXoAAzpZV?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAAkBMeXoAAzpZV?format=jpg
  - jsolson 9y ago
    This is fantastic. I'm an American who's been learning Danish casually, and as a native English speaker the pronunciation is... challenging. Even a year or so in, developing an ear for it is still an ongoing process.
    - olq 9y ago
      Learn swedish or norwegian first. Then get drunk and talk while you're eating. You're now speaking danish
lordnacho 9y ago
> The "logic" of the system is NOT transparent nor generally known to native speakers. Totally true, you often find people wondering what exactly the pattern is. A good language teacher will tell you though. > A Scandinavist language reform movement tried to get the 20-based forms replaced by 10-based like Norwegian and Swedish have. With absolutely no success. If this is a real movement, they need better PR. I've never heard anyone make this case. What's the point anyway? Interestingly if you look at French, there's a similar thing with the numbers between French French and Swiss French. Soixante-dix vs septante, and similar for 80 and 90.
- kristiandupont 9y ago
  >What's the point anyway? Well it would be easier for learners to pick up for one, but I actually think the system is annoying, even as a native speaker. When someone tells me a phone number or similar, I will often ask them to read out the digits one by one because writing down the numbers can be difficult with the alternating order.
  - lordnacho 9y ago
    That's another weird thing. You CAN read out a number as 8 individual digits, but most Danes will give you 4 two-digit numbers. It's almost a shibboleth, like that movie where the non-native German speaker uses his pointing finger instead of his thumb to count "one".
    - Bromskloss 9y ago
      I had a teacher, who, when enumerating, say, three points in his address of the class, used his thumb all three times.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  I've had Danes give me the wrong total in a shop in English since they're used to reading the numbers backwards. I've done the same with my phone number -- I practised saying it in Danish so much, I forgot whether it was 56 or 65. Now I only ever say it in English. I was very pleased at a concert when the barman said "niti fem" -- was this the reform I'd heard about, from reading this page? No, said my friend, it's just my spoken Danish is so bad the barman thought I was Swedish, and tried to be nice. I've lived here for two years, and I still can't reliably distinguish between "fem og tres" and "fem halv tres".
dsr_ 9y ago
English: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty: normal from here on (twenty-five, seventy-three, one million forty-eight thousand five hundred seventy-six) Spanish: uno dos tres.... (15) quince, normal from 16 on. French: normal begins at 17 (dix-sept), but runs into trouble later on (courtesy of a friend): 70 - soixante-dix, sixty-ten, 80 - quatre-vingts, four-twenties ("score"), and 90 - quatre-vingt-dix, four-twenty-ten. That makes 99 "quatre-vingt-dix-neuf". German is the same pattern as English, normal after 20, but prefers the smaller numbers first. I have heard that the Russians need to study their conventions intently...
- chr1 9y ago
  Russian numbers are ten based and rather straightforward; odin dva tri ... desyat (10) odinnadtsat dvenadtsat trinadtsat ... dvadtsat (20) there is no irregularity other than 40 which is sorok instead of chetiredesyat
  - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
    Foreign learners do not generally find Russian numbers to be "straightforward". Not only do nouns qualified by numbers take different numerative cases (the genitive singular for 2–4, the genitive plural for 5–10), but the declension of compound numerals is also surprising for speakers of many languages. Compound hundreds are also unpredictable. Yes, historically the varying forms are clear (the back yer in Common Slavonic sŭto ‘100’ was lost or strengthened depending on position), but learners today without any background in the Slavic languages simply need to learn them by rote.
    - chr1 9y ago
      True, sound changes like dvesti÷trista÷semsot make learning harder, but i'd say that's not really the property of the number system but of a language as a whole, since similar shifts are present in other places too. For me Russian numbers were simpler than French because you could learn the basic idea quickly, and then pick up subtle sound shifts by watching tv/reading. (disclaimer, i am not a native speaker but learned Russian at school age so may be misgudging the difficulty of the language)
drblah 9y ago
I really wish the danish numbers had been reformed. It is a drag to communicate numbers verbally and then write them down. It is very prone to errors since the verbal number sequence is so strange. Exampel: 54. It is pronounced: fire-og-halv-treds (four-and-half-threes.) As you might notice, the spoken sequence is backwards compared to the written number. this gets even more confusing when saying a number above 100. 136 is et-hundrede-og-seks-og-treidve. (One-hundreds-and-six-and-threes).
- ivanche 9y ago
  And not only in Danish, unfortunately. In German it is vierundfünfzig (four and fifty) and einhundertsechsunddreißig (one hundred six and thirty). Crazy!
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  Even worse, it's actually four-and-half-three-twenty or in plainer terms four, plus three and a half twenties.
- Bromskloss 9y ago
  Let's not make everything streamlined, bland, and the same everywhere! Let's keep our respective characters, idiosyncrasies, that were passed down from our forefathers. Let it show when you travel from one country to the next!
Bromskloss 9y ago
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/2c/2d/452c2d0569d1015f4a0b2ea27311e196--different-languages-learning-french.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/2c/2d/452c2d0569d1015f4a0b2ea27... Edit: Now that I think about it, maybe the Swedish 90 (_nittio_) should be seen as "9×10" (_nio_×_tio_), since that's at least the etymology. I don't know what to make of the German _-zig_ in _neunzig_. Regarding Japanese, I dont' speak any. Finally, if you allow yourself to dig deep enough into the origins of the French and Danish 20 (_vingt_ and _tyve_, respectively), it appears that they too could be split further as "2×10".
- FullyFunctional 9y ago
  That is a beautifully succinct and funny capture. The French numbers confused me when I was learning (was it 420107, 42017, 8017, or 97?). German, being logical and little endian, wins by getting the most significant part last, about when you finally pay attention :)
- jack1243star 9y ago
  In Japanese (and Chinese) the 'ten' acts more like a digit separator, so it is as ergonomic as most of the European languages (and perhaps more regular than English)
- Doxin 9y ago
  If the german -zig is at all similar to the dutch -tig as in 'negentig' then it'll mean something roughly equivalent to "a lot"
partycoder 9y ago
In English, I've noted people do not like thousands. e.g: - 20,000 is 20 k or 20 grand. - 1900 is 19 hundreds not 1 thousand 9 hundred. In Japanese numbers are also different: - there's a word for 10,000 (man), therefore 20,000 is not "20 x 1,000" (ni jyu sen) but rather "2 x 10,000" (ni man). - there's a word for 10^8 (oku), making 1 billion = jyu oku (10 * 10^8).
- yuubi 9y ago
  Also, man doesn't work the same way as the lower powers of 10. The lower powers 10–1000 take a prefix of 2–9 to multiply them, and omitting the prefix means one. 1 ichi 2 ni 10 juu (not ichi juu) 20 ni juu, literally two ten 100 hyaku 200 ni hyaku The powers of 10000 seem to take an obligatory prefix 1–9999, formed the usual way (I've never heard just "man" for 10k, always "ichi man", and 12340000 would be literally translated to "thousand two hundred three ten four ten-thousand", while none of the smaller powers seem to ever take a prefix > 9.) The above is based on not living in Japan, though, so the sample of numbers I've seen might well be missing some things that occur in actual native speech by someone not teaching a first-year class.
  - partycoder 9y ago
    Yes. Every "myriad" (10^4) they have another word. Meaning they have one for 10^4, 10^8, 10^12, 10^16 and so on... http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/largenumber.html http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/largenumber.html Largest one I've seen is 10^68.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  Saying "hundred" rather than "thousand" is typical of Americans, British people will say "thousand", except when saying the year.
bch 9y ago
Funny skit on Danish language and counting - https://youtu.be/8_iixmqSBQw https://youtu.be/8_iixmqSBQw

67 points by kleptako 9y ago

While the numbers have interesting etymological roots, in practice we just have more "named" numbers than most similar languages. English has special vocabulary with obvious roots for all tens up to 100 and ordinals are regular except first, second and third. In Danish we just have a lot more irregular ordinals. Practically no-one in Denmark knows about the 20-based number system. > A Scandinavist language reform movement tried to get the 20-based forms replaced by 10-based like Norwegian and Swedish have. With absolutely no success. Danes are unusually stubborn that way.

Symbiote 9y ago
I asked a younger Dane how to say "sixtieth" (for example). She couldn't tell me -- she only know how to say "number sixty". Even the textbook only gave ordinal numbers up to 31, for giving the date. Every Dane I've asked just knows the numbers. It's confusing for foreigners, since many (most?) also know at least two other European languages. When I hear "tres" I'm thinking "three", and it obviously does mean three. It's difficult to think "sixty" instead.
- wodenokoto 9y ago
  That's a great anecdote! I don't think I knew how to produce the ordinals above 39 consistently for most of my life either. And I've probably said "fyrrende" instead of "fyrretyvende" more than once! That's the thing about irregular words: if they are rare, native speakers tend to use the regular form, and in this case we have a peculiar situation where there is no regular form! When learning the 10's in Danish, I think it is very important to leave logic behind and not look for a system. As a kid I had a lot of trouble with 50 and 60 and eventually settled on "the one with "half" is smaller than the one without" and did the same with 70 and 80.

chillax 9y ago

Situation when norwegians visit denmark: https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM?t=3m16s https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM?t=3m16s

amarant 9y ago
Hehe Norwegians going to Denmark reads like a setup for a classic joke, to a Swede anyway
yagyu 9y ago
I'd say watching the full 4:17 is worth your time https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM https://youtu.be/xpj2x5s7DkM Note, this is a parody aired by Norwegian TV, hilarious to anyone who tried learning Danish at least;) Edit: on the same theme, how to pronounce any Danish word https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAAkBMeXoAAzpZV?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAAkBMeXoAAzpZV?format=jpg
- jsolson 9y ago
  This is fantastic. I'm an American who's been learning Danish casually, and as a native English speaker the pronunciation is... challenging. Even a year or so in, developing an ear for it is still an ongoing process.
  - olq 9y ago
    Learn swedish or norwegian first. Then get drunk and talk while you're eating. You're now speaking danish

lordnacho 9y ago

> The "logic" of the system is NOT transparent nor generally known to native speakers. Totally true, you often find people wondering what exactly the pattern is. A good language teacher will tell you though. > A Scandinavist language reform movement tried to get the 20-based forms replaced by 10-based like Norwegian and Swedish have. With absolutely no success. If this is a real movement, they need better PR. I've never heard anyone make this case. What's the point anyway? Interestingly if you look at French, there's a similar thing with the numbers between French French and Swiss French. Soixante-dix vs septante, and similar for 80 and 90.

kristiandupont 9y ago
>What's the point anyway? Well it would be easier for learners to pick up for one, but I actually think the system is annoying, even as a native speaker. When someone tells me a phone number or similar, I will often ask them to read out the digits one by one because writing down the numbers can be difficult with the alternating order.
- lordnacho 9y ago
  That's another weird thing. You CAN read out a number as 8 individual digits, but most Danes will give you 4 two-digit numbers. It's almost a shibboleth, like that movie where the non-native German speaker uses his pointing finger instead of his thumb to count "one".
  - Bromskloss 9y ago
    I had a teacher, who, when enumerating, say, three points in his address of the class, used his thumb all three times.
Symbiote 9y ago
I've had Danes give me the wrong total in a shop in English since they're used to reading the numbers backwards. I've done the same with my phone number -- I practised saying it in Danish so much, I forgot whether it was 56 or 65. Now I only ever say it in English. I was very pleased at a concert when the barman said "niti fem" -- was this the reform I'd heard about, from reading this page? No, said my friend, it's just my spoken Danish is so bad the barman thought I was Swedish, and tried to be nice. I've lived here for two years, and I still can't reliably distinguish between "fem og tres" and "fem halv tres".

dsr_ 9y ago

English: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty: normal from here on (twenty-five, seventy-three, one million forty-eight thousand five hundred seventy-six) Spanish: uno dos tres.... (15) quince, normal from 16 on. French: normal begins at 17 (dix-sept), but runs into trouble later on (courtesy of a friend): 70 - soixante-dix, sixty-ten, 80 - quatre-vingts, four-twenties ("score"), and 90 - quatre-vingt-dix, four-twenty-ten. That makes 99 "quatre-vingt-dix-neuf". German is the same pattern as English, normal after 20, but prefers the smaller numbers first. I have heard that the Russians need to study their conventions intently...

chr1 9y ago
Russian numbers are ten based and rather straightforward; odin dva tri ... desyat (10) odinnadtsat dvenadtsat trinadtsat ... dvadtsat (20) there is no irregularity other than 40 which is sorok instead of chetiredesyat
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  Foreign learners do not generally find Russian numbers to be "straightforward". Not only do nouns qualified by numbers take different numerative cases (the genitive singular for 2–4, the genitive plural for 5–10), but the declension of compound numerals is also surprising for speakers of many languages. Compound hundreds are also unpredictable. Yes, historically the varying forms are clear (the back yer in Common Slavonic sŭto ‘100’ was lost or strengthened depending on position), but learners today without any background in the Slavic languages simply need to learn them by rote.
  - chr1 9y ago
    True, sound changes like dvesti÷trista÷semsot make learning harder, but i'd say that's not really the property of the number system but of a language as a whole, since similar shifts are present in other places too. For me Russian numbers were simpler than French because you could learn the basic idea quickly, and then pick up subtle sound shifts by watching tv/reading. (disclaimer, i am not a native speaker but learned Russian at school age so may be misgudging the difficulty of the language)

drblah 9y ago

I really wish the danish numbers had been reformed. It is a drag to communicate numbers verbally and then write them down. It is very prone to errors since the verbal number sequence is so strange. Exampel: 54. It is pronounced: fire-og-halv-treds (four-and-half-threes.) As you might notice, the spoken sequence is backwards compared to the written number. this gets even more confusing when saying a number above 100. 136 is et-hundrede-og-seks-og-treidve. (One-hundreds-and-six-and-threes).

ivanche 9y ago
And not only in Danish, unfortunately. In German it is vierundfünfzig (four and fifty) and einhundertsechsunddreißig (one hundred six and thirty). Crazy!
KozmoNau7 9y ago
Even worse, it's actually four-and-half-three-twenty or in plainer terms four, plus three and a half twenties.
Bromskloss 9y ago
Let's not make everything streamlined, bland, and the same everywhere! Let's keep our respective characters, idiosyncrasies, that were passed down from our forefathers. Let it show when you travel from one country to the next!

Bromskloss 9y ago

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/2c/2d/452c2d0569d1015f4a0b2ea27311e196--different-languages-learning-french.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/2c/2d/452c2d0569d1015f4a0b2ea27... Edit: Now that I think about it, maybe the Swedish 90 (_nittio_) should be seen as "9×10" (_nio_×_tio_), since that's at least the etymology. I don't know what to make of the German _-zig_ in _neunzig_. Regarding Japanese, I dont' speak any. Finally, if you allow yourself to dig deep enough into the origins of the French and Danish 20 (_vingt_ and _tyve_, respectively), it appears that they too could be split further as "2×10".

FullyFunctional 9y ago
That is a beautifully succinct and funny capture. The French numbers confused me when I was learning (was it 420107, 42017, 8017, or 97?). German, being logical and little endian, wins by getting the most significant part last, about when you finally pay attention :)
jack1243star 9y ago
In Japanese (and Chinese) the 'ten' acts more like a digit separator, so it is as ergonomic as most of the European languages (and perhaps more regular than English)
Doxin 9y ago
If the german -zig is at all similar to the dutch -tig as in 'negentig' then it'll mean something roughly equivalent to "a lot"

partycoder 9y ago

In English, I've noted people do not like thousands. e.g: - 20,000 is 20 k or 20 grand. - 1900 is 19 hundreds not 1 thousand 9 hundred. In Japanese numbers are also different: - there's a word for 10,000 (man), therefore 20,000 is not "20 x 1,000" (ni jyu sen) but rather "2 x 10,000" (ni man). - there's a word for 10^8 (oku), making 1 billion = jyu oku (10 * 10^8).

yuubi 9y ago
Also, man doesn't work the same way as the lower powers of 10. The lower powers 10–1000 take a prefix of 2–9 to multiply them, and omitting the prefix means one. 1 ichi 2 ni 10 juu (not ichi juu) 20 ni juu, literally two ten 100 hyaku 200 ni hyaku The powers of 10000 seem to take an obligatory prefix 1–9999, formed the usual way (I've never heard just "man" for 10k, always "ichi man", and 12340000 would be literally translated to "thousand two hundred three ten four ten-thousand", while none of the smaller powers seem to ever take a prefix > 9.) The above is based on not living in Japan, though, so the sample of numbers I've seen might well be missing some things that occur in actual native speech by someone not teaching a first-year class.
- partycoder 9y ago
  Yes. Every "myriad" (10^4) they have another word. Meaning they have one for 10^4, 10^8, 10^12, 10^16 and so on... http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/largenumber.html http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/largenumber.html Largest one I've seen is 10^68.
Symbiote 9y ago
Saying "hundred" rather than "thousand" is typical of Americans, British people will say "thousand", except when saying the year.

bch 9y ago

Funny skit on Danish language and counting - https://youtu.be/8_iixmqSBQw https://youtu.be/8_iixmqSBQw